The Cuckoo
by shanatique
Summary: Well-behaved women seldom made history, as the saying went, and she was fine with that. She was entirely content with her new lot in life, even if it came with a name she stole from a girl who was never born and a face that didn't even match that name. She was happy. And then a meddlesome magi decided to throw her into a Dungeon. It was the start of a very distressing trend.
1. Prologue: The Lost Princess

**Blanket Disclaimer:** _Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic_ and all other related source materials are the sole artistic and intellectual property of Shinobu Ohtaka, _Weekly Shōnen Sunday,_ and their assorted media affiliates.

* * *

 **The Cuckoo**

* * *

 _Prologue: The Lost Princess_

 _"Everything's a story — You are a story — I am a story."_

―Frances Hodgson Burnett, _A Little Princess_

* * *

The First Imperial Prince of Kou stared out at one of the palace's private gardens, his eyebrows slowly creeping up his forehead.

There was a little girl striding purposefully across the carefully manicured walkway, thoughtfully skirting his favorite rock garden. He followed her brazen journey with his eyes, and then his head when she was more than halfway across the lawn. He felt rather than heard his bodyguards stir from their unseen positions, intent on putting a halt to her trespassing, and raised a hand in a clear signal to stand down. He set his calligraphy tools to the side and pushed himself to his feet, stretching once before dropping his arms and hopping down from the veranda, strolling over to cut her off at the red bridge arching over his koi pond.

His legs, much longer than hers, ate up the distance quickly and served as an excellent roadblock. He slouched lazily against one thick red post as with his feet propped up against the matching post on the opposite side, openly peering down at her as she slowly drew to a stop.

She was a tiny thing, practically drowning in the dark purple robes swathed over her, with her pale blonde hair gathered into two fat buns at the lower base of her head. He knew who she was, obviously, but it was his first time seeing her in the flesh since her arrival. He was intrigued, all the more so by the way her face was pursed in a distant, thoughtful expression as she studied him right back. He grappled furiously with the urge to grin. She was _adorable_.

"Can I help you?" He asked instead, keeping his tone and expression controlled.

"I'm on a quest," she informed him gravely, the last word slurring into the faintest of lisps. It was the trademark of a tongue that was still learning how to wrap around words, just like in his baby brother's case.

Hakuyuu wanted to coo. _Precious._ He remained strong, however; it wouldn't do to have the future Emperor of Kou displaying his one weakness so openly. "A quest?" He stroked his chin, leaning in. "Interesting. What are you going to do on this quest of yours, I wonder?"

"I'm going to find Princess Kougyoku," declared Princess Kougyoku, her pink eyes dead serious.

Hakuyuu blinked.

"You're going to...?" He trailed off, uncertain as to whether he had heard her right.

"Find Princess Kougyoku," she said again, voice surprisingly firm.

"Ah." He pushed off from the post, smiling at her as he straightened to his full height. "Well, I think I can help with that. Come here." He knelt down and waved her over. She padded over obligingly, allowing him to shuffle her in front of him. He pointed down at the pond's surface. "See her?"

"That," said Kougyoku slowly. "Is a very big fish. Not a princess."

"What? Oh." He laughed and peered down. "No, you're right, that's Old Buta." Technically the monstrous, nearly four foot black and gold koi was named Butaku, a 'soldier of the river', but after being spoiled for decades he was more suited to being a pig, rather than a warrior. "I meant the little girl looking up at us in the water."

"No, that's _me_ ," she explained patiently. "We're looking for Princess Kougyoku."

"Exactly," he agreed, relaxing his self-control just a little bit and squeezing her tiny shoulders.

"But I'm _not_ Princess Kougyoku." She finally seemed to be getting frustrated, puffing her cheeks out in a laborious sigh.

Hakuyuu wanted to scoop her up and maybe never put her down ever again. En wouldn't mind, surely? He had a surplus of sisters, he wouldn't mind if Hakuyuu stole just one.

No.

No, bad prince, he scolded himself sternly. "Who are you then?" He needed a distraction.

"My mama named me _Chrysanthi_ ," she told him. It came out like an accusation, and Hakuyuu had to hold back a wince.

His uncle was many things; a brutal strategist, an admirable warrior, a mountain of a man, and, as evident by Hakuyuu's brood of cousins, a consummate womanizer. He had one official wife, four concubines from the Court and, most recently, he had brought in his current favorite, Domitia. A slave from Reim, traded young and trained well, she was an undeniably exotic, breathtakingly beautiful woman.

The courtesan was sweet as honey, Hakuyuu could freely admit, but twice as thick. She was such a natural airhead that the thought of telling Uncle Koutoku he had fathered a little girl off of her had never even crossed her mind. According to her warped rationale, Uncle Koutoku's children had red hair to mark them as _his_ , so Kougyoku's golden locks meant that she was _Domitia's_ child. She had named the girl after her late best friend, a young Artemyran girl who had died from illness not long before Domitia had been sold off to her brothel.

Given the little girl's coloring—blonde with pink eyes—it was, perhaps, an astoundingly apt use of logic from her.

"I think I see what the problem is here," he began, after a short pause.

"No!" Kougyoku stomped one tiny slipper-clad foot against the lacquered wood. Hakuyuu's hand twitched faintly, but he managed to keep hold of his fast-fraying composure. "I-I'm not _confused,"_ she insisted. "I'm not. I know they mean me when they say that. But it's _not_ me. That's somebody else."

"You are definitely Prince Koutoku's child," he assured her. "Our magicians made sure of it. And that means... well, it means that you're a princess and that you need a name with 'Kou' at the front of it. So now you have two names."

His uncle had obviously put next to no effort into coming up with that name, he thought a bit uncharitably. He could have at least gone for Koukiku, to minimize any confusion. Granted, given just how many children he had, and the way their names could jumble together if one wasn't concentrating on keeping them straight, perhaps the man had just wanted a name that popped out easily.

Given that she was the only blonde in the royal family, that was barely worth calling an excuse.

"...oh." She blinked, shoulders going slack with palpable astonishment, and he realized then that his baby cousin had truly, honestly thought that she was in the palace under false pretenses.

"Mhm," he agreed, nodding. "Some nobles," he shared in a conspirator's whisper, "have two names too. One of them is personal, just for friends and family, and one of them is official, once they're all grown up." He finally, finally gave in, placing his hand on top of her head and rubbing it gently. "Your mama still calls you Chrysanthi, right? So, just think of 'Kougyoku' as another part of 'Princess'; it's just a title, because people need to show respect to a lady such as yourself." Perhaps that last bit had been a bit flowery for a four-year-old, he conceded with an internal grimace.

She seemed to be absorbing it just fine, though, and was nodding slowly. "Do you have a persh-sonal name?" She stumbled slightly, her lisp briefly worsening as she fought back a yawn. It was likely time for her to have a nap he noted and then fought back the urge to laugh triumphantly as he finally found a decent reason to scoop her up and stand in one smooth motion.

"Just 'Yuu', instead of Hakuyuu," he told her, cradling her against his chest carefully. "Tell you what; you can call me that if you let me take you back to your attendants; they're probably tearing your wing apart looking for you."

"M'kay." Her tiny fingers curled into the richly embroidered silk of his robes. Her eyes seemed to be drooping, now that she wasn't being spurred on by righteous indignation at her 'mistaken' identity. "You can..." She lost the battle and let out a soft yawn, hiding it behind one long purple sleeve. Hakuyuu had the sudden, intense urge to crush her against his chest in the tightest hug possible, but luckily the moment passed as swiftly as it came. "You can call me Anthy, then, Yuu-shama."

"Yuu-niisama," he corrected her as he started to stride back to the veranda. He had no idea which part of the palace had been refurbished as her personal quarters, but his guards doubtlessly knew.

"Yuu-niishama," she mumbled back obediently, nestling against his neck.

She was asleep by the time he reluctantly handed her off to the maid who served as her primary caretaker. The woman was nearly in tears and shaking like a leaf as he bid her a genial farewell and turned on his heel. As well she should; being so negligent as to lose track of a young princess, even a half-foreign lowborn princess, was inexcusable. She would be dismissed immediately.

Hakuyuu couldn't _stand_ incompetent people, especially when they managed to endanger children.

* * *

All in all, Anthy was entirely justified in not understanding her circumstances until they were all but waved in her face. She had no recollection of dying, so being reborn in and of itself was an occurrence that left her reeling during her infancy. She had understood early on that she lived in a place called the Kou Empire, but given that she had a broad range of anime series under her belt, she had simply written it off as the China-equivalent in whatever strange, anachronistic world was to be her new home. She even knew that her mother was a prostitute; it was impossible not to, when they lived in a brothel.

Being dragged into the Imperial Court and renamed 'Kougyoku', being told she now had nine half-siblings, being _inspected by actual magicians_ , no part of the last year and a half of her second life was anything close to something she could have possibly prepared herself for.

A faint aftertaste of horror lingered in her mouth every time she said that name, so she seldom did. It was stolen goods, in her guilt-laden opinion. This life, this name, it was never meant for _her_. It should be a different girl in her shoes: a lonely little redhead. If there was any justice in this farce of a world, _Anthy_ would still be a redhead, too, but _no;_ no, the universe, or the Rukh, or Solomon, or _whoever_ was to blame for her current situation had decided to make it just that much more obvious that Anthy didn't belong here, gifting her with one glaring trait certain to make her stick out from the rest of her 'family'. From the rest of the court entirely, even. It sometimes seemed as though every color of the rainbow was covered by the various servants, guards, generals, and courtiers milling around the palace _except_ for yellow.

Still, it had its uses from time to time. The hairstyle her maids insisted on had been what originally sparked the idea for her current moniker, conjuring half-forgotten memories of a different series she had seen in her previous life. 'Anthy' was the name of a false princess, of a girl trapped in a hellish fairytale that threatened to be the death of her. It was a fitting name, without the unpleasant undertone that weighed down 'Kougyoku'.

Naturally, her maids still called her _Princess Kougyoku._ It would be utterly unseemly to call her by a foreign name, or even worse: an affectionate nickname. And it was _entirely_ out of the question not to mention her station every time they addressed her.

So, with that in mind, the people she _could_ manage to convince felt like monumental victories. Hakuyuu had been the first, and was a surprisingly gentle man when he wasn't busy projecting the image of a stern, collected future Emperor. From what she could gather it seemed that his vice of choice, strangely enough, was anything he deemed 'cute', and especially young children, in the strictly innocent sense. Antsy knew for a fact that he was looking forward to being crowned Emperor almost as much for the obligation to sire an heir as for the power and prestige. Hakuren had obviously been informed privately, because he called her Anthy from the moment they met, his voice amused as he plucked her from the branches of a plum tree she had chosen to nap in. He had insisted on escorting her all the way back to her caretaker at the time, a woman who had snuck off for an assignation with some visiting nobleman's servant.

She had been replaced just as quickly as the woman who had been meant to be watching her the day she met Hakuyuu. They were strict, those princes.

Convincing her mother had been simple, only needing a single correction before she took up use of the shorter name. Her _father_ , however, was the true feather in her cap.

Before Anthy had ever been born to Domitia, two things of particular note had been true: she had worked with children—young children, at that—and she had been a textbook Daddy's Girl.

Ren Koutoku wasn't much like her first father, granted; he was massive, with a cruel mouth and fiery hair, and at first he had been entirely dismissive of her existence. She had vague recollections of a black-bearded man with a wrinkled face, but if her memory wasn't at fault then those were changes that would only be foisted upon him with age.

Perhaps, she reasoned, perhaps it was stress that did it; Koutoku only had the normal amount of lines on his face for a man of his age: crows feet and frown creases. He had long hair and a full beard, but they were every bit as red as the rest of his children's. If the added mess of wrinkles she half-recalled were from stress or some more nefarious reason, then perhaps his hair had begun to go white as well, and it was easier to dye it black than red. Or maybe he had dyed his hair in tribute to his late elder brother.

Whatever the case, it wasn't particularly important at the time. It had just surprised her, when the man himself entered her mother's chambers in the middle of their tea party.

It was a tradition Domitia had started almost as soon as Anthy could sit upright, dressing her up in tiny finery and arranging them around the low table in her quarters at the brothel. In many ways, Domitia was far more innocent and girlish than Anthy could ever hope to be, but she gladly humored her mother all the same.

The quality of their private little parties took a sharp upward turn after they had been welcomed into the palace, and now the tea was served from gilded pots alongside pretty little foreign delicacies. Anthy had been nibbling at a slice of what she was almost certain was Turkish Delight—the maids had called it _lokum_ as they laid it out—when Koutoku swept into the room.

As somebody who worked with children in the past, Anthy knew that there were roughly four types of adults: those who loved children honestly, those who loved the _idea_ of children more than the reality, those who openly disliked children, and those who simply did not interact with children normally, and so regarded them with a certain degree of wary optimism.

The two princes she had met and her mother were the first type. As she locked gazes with her father, she tentatively categorized him as the last type. He was a man more at home in the bedroom or a battlefield than a nursery, she was willing to bet with a bit more certainty, because his bold body language shifted into something stiff and austere as he eyed her right back.

As somebody who worked with children in the past and who had enjoyed a doting, comfortable relationship with both her parents, Anthy also knew exactly what sort of behaviors _all_ adults wanted from children, at their core.

So, finally looking away, she wriggled over silken pillows on her knees until she was adjacent to her mother rather than across the table from her. She looked back up at him expectantly, and some of the formality in his posture had relaxed out of pure befuddlement. Still looking straight at him, Anthy bent over and straightened the plush cushion she had been kneeling on, before straightening again.

Domitia had been delighted and quickly scooped her into her lap.

"My sweet, sweet girl," she crooned, nuzzling against Anthy's temple. "I agree, Papa should definitely join us!"

She had been lucky none of the servants had heard her tag such a banal form of address onto Koutoku, Anthy had thought, even as she reflexively blushed over being showered with affection in front of witnesses. Anthy was probably only meant to call him her 'Honored Father', most likely.

Koutoku and Domitia both seemed to conclude that the blush was a matter of her being shy over her invitation. Her mother found it adorable, the sparkling look in her blue eyes making that much abundantly clear, whereas her father seemed to gain some sort of sense of superiority. Doubtless, the attentions of half a dozen women or more over the years had instilled some manner of cocky familiarity with demure 'affection' upon him, and gave him some familiar ground to stand on. She doubted he had ever been invited to take part in a princess's tea party before.

Surprisingly, there really _was_ a first time for everything.

Anthy had, in retrospect, been incredibly crafty. Manipulative, even; after he had sat down at the other end of the table, selecting the strongest, blackest tea they had and skirting the sweets for more savory snacks, she spent the rest of her time keeping quiet and stealing little wide-eyed looks here and there, as though she thought he wasn't looking.

A faint twist tugged at the corner of that cruel mouth a little more each time she did. The interest of a child, she knew, could be incredibly satisfying when one wasn't in the middle of something that required concentration. She had made sure to glance back when it came time for her to go back to her lessons, peeking over her long sleeves as she murmured a formal goodbye—or at least as formal as could be expected from a four-year-old.

She had scurried out after one last glance over her shoulder, and had heard a low bark of laughter as she slid the door closed behind her. It had been an excellent day to lay down the groundwork for future run-ins.

Crossing paths with her father was not a common occurrence, even after that, but every time she wormed her way in just a little bit more through awed little glances and shifting around like she wanted to latch onto his hand or leg, but was holding herself back. It was an arduous process that took the greater part of six months, but it was one she was equal parts sincerely and cynically determined to complete. This was her life, now, and if she couldn't have her original father, then she would damn well at least have one that _liked_ her.

It came to fruition around the time that her two main caretakers finally went the way of their predecessors, sneaking off to watch some spar between her cousins when they thought she was absorbed in practicing her letters on an ornate slab of slate.

She had gathered up a few soft rolls into a needlessly large silk handkerchief, knotting it into a bundle and hoisting it up on a gold-painted rod that one of the maids had accidentally knocked loose from a gauzy curtain that morning.

She set off with what was, she assumed, the most expensive hobo-bindle ever assembled over her shoulder, in hopes of stumbling upon Hakuyuu's garden again. She obviously took a wrong turn somewhere, because when she turned a corner she found herself staring at the familiar robes of her father. When she tilted her head back, his face could have been carved from granite for all the expression it showed.

"Now where," he began, his voice a low and ominous rumble, "do you think you are going?"

She pursed her lips, before shaking her little bindle showily. "I'm going to go feed the Pig-Fish," she told him.

If she had been expecting confusion, she would have been disappointed. "Old Butaku's still alive?" Her father stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Fine."

He reached out with one massive hand, plucking up the rod with surprising gentleness and tucking it under his arm, striding down the corridor she had come from. He stopped halfway down, when he realized she wasn't following.

"Well? Come _along_ , Anthy," he bid her with some impatience, a bit of thunder creeping into his expression. She quickly scurried after him.

It wasn't until they were seated on that red bridge, bathed in the dying light of day that she fully understood why he was being so accommodating. His gait may have been straight as an arrow, but there was no hiding the familiar aroma of booze wafting off of him when she was that close. He had likely called her the first thing that popped into his head: the name her mother doubtlessly used when chattering about her to him.

That was fine. Anthy hadn't looked that particular gift horse in the mouth. Instead, she scooted up to his side as he crumbled a roll apart in one large fist and poured some of the pieces into her cupped palms. Butaku had once again swam up to the bridge as soon as they approached, waiting expectantly.

"Spoiled old carp," Koutoku snorted, scattering a few crumbs that were quickly gobbled up.

Anthy followed suit, jolting back when the fish nearly splashed her to get at the food.

Her father snorted. "Next time, bring grapefruit or oranges, cut into fourths," he advised, tossing the rest of the bread pieces on his hand further away from the bridge and watching the massive koi turn on a dime to go after them. "Those will float." He shifted so that he could eye her without straining his neck. "If you try to feed him by hand, you might lose it."

That was all he really said, then, the both of them lapsing into a lazy silence as they worked their way through the meager supplies she had bought. He was obviously much more sober by the time night had fallen and his attendants found them, smoothly getting to his feet and bidding one of the men to escort her back to her quarters without so much as a goodbye.

Her wayward caretakers, she found the next day, had been _executed_.

Perhaps that was what led her to her current situation, two days later. She stared blankly up at the young man smiling politely down at her.

"You're a _boy_ ," she remarked, eyes narrowing shrewdly.

"I am," he agreed, keeping his voice patently genial, and gesturing to the young women—dark haired, identical twins—behind him. "My name is Ka Koubun, Princess. I will be in charge of your schedule and overseeing your tutors, from now on. En Shinju and En Shinri will be by your side at all times, even when I cannot or should not be with you."

 _You're not supposed to be here yet_ , she almost told him, but instead she merely nodded her understanding. It was, more or less, the usual caretaker introduction; she had seen enough of them come and go at this point to know that. Still, this time it seemed that more effort had been put forth to find replacements—the amount that the original Kougyoku had only merited after her father had become Emperor.

She had that thought to chew on, even as she was swept off to learn the history of her homeland and put through her paces in etiquette training. She had obviously given some thought to changing the course of events she nebulously remembered from her past life. Ultimately, she had decided not to; it was a fact that there were innumerable realities branching off from that storyline.

It would be the height of folly to assume that she had magically been reborn into that exact world, or that her birth alone had been an isolated incident without ripple effects. For all she knew, the Ren Gyokuen of this world was entirely herself, and Arba lurked in the heart of some other woman. It seemed unlikely, given that she had seen the members of Al-Thamen milling around the palace, but she had no way to back up any claims she might make and wasn't even remotely willing to run the risk of making that type of enemy.

She didn't even know _when,_ exactly, her uncle and cousins were meant to die; the period of time it had occurred in the original story could have already come and gone. If it didn't happen by the time she was seven, she could probably safely assume that she had no idea what would happen, and could fully embrace her new life.

Still, that was no reason not to cherish her remaining time, with that tentative deadline established.

"May I go play with Yuu-niisama?" She made sure to ask her new minders, once her lessons were done for the day.

Koubun and the sisters seemed astonished that she was being so direct; the twins had watched her like hawks the entire day. Anthy suspected that the legend of her wandering ways had taken on a life of its own, magnified more and more with each turnover. Or perhaps it was the forward manner of familiarity she spoke of him with that was giving him trouble.

"I—" His voice cracked and he hurriedly cleared his throat. "I can make no promises, Princess, but I will send a missive to First Prince Hakuyuu requesting an audience with him for you."

"Thank you," she said again, before going to practice on her slate again. She had been a voracious reader in her previous life, and the sooner she could read more advanced books, the better.

Her servants still seemed a little off-kilter in the aftermath. They had likely imagined some terrible monster of an urchin that would beguile and bamboozle them, leaving them to face the ire of her family. She couldn't blame them, even if she did find it a little insulting. She _would_ have and _had_ asked her minders to go out in the past, if they had been there to ask. As long as they weren't negligent, they would never face the same problem as the unfortunate women that had most recently been terminated from the position.

Hakuyuu was busy, that afternoon, as Koubun had no doubt expected, but was waiting for her the next day after her lessons, which left the teenager understandably thunderstruck.

"I thought His Highness would be busy preparing for the coronation," her attendant managed in a tone that only squeaked a little bit.

"There is not much for me to do that I have not done already," Hakuyuu said in measured, regal tones. They had been ushered into a receiving room with an open view of yet another garden—this one, Anthy thought, featured fruit trees more than anything—and were being served tea.

It felt strange, sitting formally with her servants seated behind her, Hakuyuu and his own men arrayed similarly on the other side of the room. She thought he might prefer it just being the two of them instead, but she supposed images needed to be maintained if the big day was supposedly looming near.

That also moved up her 'deadline', so at least she wouldn't be waiting on tenterhooks for much longer.

"Besides," Hakuyuu said, a touch of humor warming his tone almost imperceptibly, as he shared a glance with her over his cup. "It's bad form to keep a lady like Anthy waiting. Hakuren can handle things for a little while."

"Anthy?" Koubun questioned later, once the little meeting had concluded and they were heading back to her quarters for her mid-afternoon nap. The twins ghosted along in their wake. She still hadn't heard either woman utter a sound.

"Mama named me Chrysanthi," she explained, glancing around; she never came to this part of the palace very often and the decorations were very eye-catching, to say the least. "So 'Anthy' is my personal name, and 'Kougyoku' is my formal name."

"I see," the young man hummed, filing that little tidbit away. She doubted he would ever use it, but she gave him points for asking in the first place.

A week later, Hakuyuu was crowned as the next Emperor of Kou, without even the slightest of hiccups. Something in Anthy relaxed then, as she stood with her mother among the child-strangers and haughty women she was meant to call family. She grinned at her cousin and the elegant lady she assumed was his wife as the procession passed by.

She had absolutely no idea what was in store for her. That ignorance was freeing, for once, instead of daunting.

* * *

 **Next Time:** _It was the pointed, floppy-brimmed hat that sparked her memory more than anything, though she hadn't remembered the feathers being quite so large._


	2. Chapter 1: Beware Magi Bearing Gifts

**The Cuckoo**

* * *

 _Chapter 1: Beware Magi Bearing Gifts_

 _"She did not care very much for other little girls, but if she had plenty of books she could console herself."_

― Frances Hodgson Burnett, _A Little Princess_

* * *

"Lost _yet again_ , Kougyoku?"

Anthy glanced up from her book, a volume of folk tales from Reim, and was unsurprised to find Kourin sneering down at her. The second youngest princess had never liked her, for reasons that ranged from the fact that their chosen hairstyles were similar, to her dubious crime of stealing the title of youngest princess, to the fact that she was from lowborn stock, to the undeniable truth that she was as close to a favored child as their distant and brutal father was ever likely to have.

The proof of that last point of conflict sat on her head even now, a gift from Koutoku for her recent seventeenth birthday: a boxy, tiered ornamental headdress made of gold and golden silk, with a lattice of golden links shaped like plum blossoms hanging down the sides. It seemed a bit ostentatious in her opinion, but it kept the sun out of her eyes and drove her sister absolutely insane, so naturally she wore it at every possible opportunity.

"No, no," she hummed noncommittally. "I am exactly where I'm meant to be. Thank you for your concern, though, Princess Kourin."

Kourin wouldn't be concerned about her if she were filled with more arrows than a pincushion, unless she was bleeding on something that Kourin owned or wanted. Most of her sisters felt that way, and since Kourin was the only one yet to be married aside from Anthy, she seemed to feel that it was her duty to make up for the lack of antagonistic figures in Anthy's life these days.

Over all, she had been slightly surprised at just how her branch of the family tree had been arranged. By his official and now deceased wife, Koutoku had produced three sets of twins before the woman's body had given up and she grew sickly. Anthy suspected some manner of drug was behind that exhaustively consistent fertility. The rest of his children had been produced one a piece amongst his concubines.

The eldest of his children, surprisingly, were the twins Kourei and Koutei, who had been betrothed and married off months before Anthy had been discovered. After them were Kouen and his sister Kousen, whose marriage had been postponed until after Hakuyuu's coronation, out of deference. Next was Kouyuu, who had been particularly spiteful to Anthy and whom she suspected had been in love with Hakuren, before _her_ marriage sent her to the southern coast of the continent.

The next ones born had been the final set of twins, Koumei and his sister Kourei, who had always seemed more uncomfortable with Anthy's presence than outright hateful. Kouka, Kourin's most bitter rival or dearest friend, depending on the day, more than made up for Kourei's uncertainty. Anthy would be a filthy liar if she gave even the slightest indication that it had been hard to watch her leave last year. Kouha was the last before Anthy, born just a few months ahead of her and a pariah of an entirely different sort within the confines of the palace, due to his mother's fragile mental health and his choice in retainers.

He openly hated Kourin and Kouka and presumably Kouyuu as well, spending most of their childhood years embroiled in some sort of concubine-affiliate proxy war with the three of them. He was usually at least mildly affectionate with Anthy when their paths crossed, either out of sheer spite towards their half-sisters, or because he enjoyed having a sibling that was both younger and shorter than him.

She suspected it was a mix of those factors.

"Oh, _I_ see," Kourin raised a sleeve to her mouth, expression mocking as she dropped her voice to a faux-whisper. "Has the Empress finally chased you away from sniffing around her husband and son?"

Anthy felt her eyebrows rise at the tired rumor. She had been hearing that sort of thing since she first began inheriting her mother's curves. "Seeing as I'll be having tea with her after Crown Prince Hakuwa finishes his swordplay practice," she said slowly, "I don't believe so."

Crown Prince Hakuwa, as he never tired of telling people, happened to be ten years and seven months old. His mother, the Empress Eiki, was a no-nonsense woman who put no stock in rumor and had enjoyed practicing for motherhood on Anthy, at Hakuyuu's suggestion.

"Princess Kogyouku," Koubun cut in smoothly, stepping forward. "If you'll pardon the interruption, I believe His Highness Prince Kouen has finished his business in the Western Library, now."

Dear, sweet Koubun.

"Thank you," she said, closing her book and rising to her feet. She tossed her half-sister a polite smile. _"That_ was why I was out here," she explained. "If you'll excuse me…"

"Oh, by all means," Kourin smiled back, eyes poisonous. "It would be such a shame for that doughy skin of yours to lose its carefully cultivated pallor."

"It _would_ be a shame," Anthy agreed, both to blow off the joke about her weight—another old stand-by, and entirely unfounded because it was only a slight degree of chubbiness, _thank you_ —as well as to have the last word. And then she left, Shinju and Shinri quickly following suit.

Over a decade together and she still hadn't gotten so much as a whisper out of the sisters, despite her best efforts. They still managed to communicate a certain sense of stern, protective affection all the same, as evidenced by the way they had both been watching Kourin during the entire exchange, just skirting the edge of predatory.

Koubun… Koubun was a strange case.

While she knew he had to have some sort of ambition in him, he was nothing like the grandiose, sly caricature she half-recalled from her previous life. While she hadn't been able to talk him around to calling her Anthy or even Princess Chrysanthi, he always seemed to know just how and when to intervene for her, and left little touches that showed just how well he knew her.

His save just now was a good example of that, as was the little pink six-petal chrysanthemum he painted in the center of her brow every morning, without fail. Similarly, just as she was beginning to become uncomfortable with the familiar reality of being a short young woman with a full figure, he had already contacted the tailors and readied a new wardrobe for her.

Nowadays, she still dressed in dark purple robes with a ruffled under-layer of soft pink, but her chest was modestly hidden by a high-necked, red cape that fell to the large bow her yellow sash was tied in at her underbust, with a full skirt in matching scarlet. Her hairstyle was much the same, with minimal changes. Given the length, half of each bun was now wrapped with a thin braid like a ribbon, to cut down on the sheer girth of her hairstyle.

All in all, little had changed for her over the years. It wouldn't last, of course, since it was only a matter of months before Kourin was carted off to the altar and Anthy would be expected to follow suit, but she had enjoyed it, more or less.

"Princess?"

She snapped out of her nostalgic thoughts when Koubun spoke up again, and realized they had reached the library. "Sorry, Koubun. I was somewhere else for a moment there."

"…Princess," he spoke again, this time with visible hesitance. "I assure you, it really is simple jealousy; you are an exceptionally lovely young lady—"

"I'm not bothered by those comments," she cut in, and it was almost true. It was just her body type, she knew; the eternal pitfall of being less than five feet tall with wide hips and full breasts. Domitia assured her she was gorgeous, but some days it was difficult not to resent her mother's effortless, statuesque beauty. She had been short in her previous life, but just she couldn't understand how she managed to be _even shorter_ in this life, when both of her parents were so tall.

"Of course," Koubun said, allowing her to have her way.

"Of course," she repeated with a firm nod, and then she swept into the large library where they kept the foreign books. She settled down at one of the large desks and carefully removed her headdress, anding it off to Koubun for safe keeping. Then she opened her book back up, trying to get back into the story.

She wasn't going to let her reading time be spoiled by _Kourin_ , of all people.

* * *

Some time later, she was pulled away from the familiar tale of a maze and a monster at its center by a group of what sounded like soldiers running outside of the library, shouting orders to one another.

She looked over at Koubun, astonished, because the Western Library was near the heart of the palace and was notoriously difficult to reach unless one knew exactly where they meant to go. It sounded as though there was either an intruder or—

"Judal again, do you think?" Anthy wondered.

"It does sound as though the Oracle has gotten up to some manner of mischief again," Koubun sighed, rolling up the scroll he had been perusing and standing. "Still, please stay inside while I go confirm the situation, Princess. Shinju, Shinri, guard the doors." He swept out of the room, the twins already shifting into place.

The twins thought Judal was a bad influence, so they might treat him even more harshly than an intruder, if handed even the flimsy pretense of an uncertain situation.

Given that the last time she let Judal talk her into something, she and Hakuryuu had ended up lost in the rural countryside for two days and two nights, Anthy couldn't exactly fault them. They could protect her from any manner of normal threats to her life and station—assassins, kidnappers, her own ignorance—but against a magi there is admittedly very little they could do.

So naturally, that was exactly what they ended up being pitted against.

Anthy didn't understand what had happened, at first; the doors were out of her line of sight, and neither of the sisters made any noise when they moved. It wasn't until a man dropped from above and slid into the seat across from her that she understood that her guards had either been incapacitated or shut out.

She was so taken aback by the unprecedented situation that she simply blinked at him for a long moment, not really registering his presence. He made no move to hurry her or snap her out of her momentary daze, instead taking in the sight of her with a genial, beaming smile, his chin balanced on his palms.

He was an attractive man, more delicate than handsome, with a long braid of blond hair and a plunging neckline not unlike Kouen's style of choice these days. It was the pointed, floppy-brimmed hat that sparked her memory more than anything, though she hadn't remembered the feathers being quite so large.

"You're the magi Yunan," she said, and immediately wanted to kick herself. She could claim she had heard of him from the various magicians in the court—She got along surprisingly well with many of members of Al-Thamen, including two of them who were named Markkio and Ithnan and were frustratingly, worryingly familiar in a fuzzy sort of way—but it was still a rather wild accusation to make.

Yunan seemed entirely unbothered; if anything, his smile grew even more at the almost accusing tone she had leveled at him. "Exactly right," he nodded, lacing his fingers together under his chin. "And _you're_ the Princess Chrysanthi."

"Most people," she said slowly, beginning to feel alarmed. "Call me Princess Kougyoku."

He made a show of inspecting her appearance. "You look far more like a golden flower than a ruby, in my opinion."

"I see," she said, though she honestly couldn't see the point in talking about the suitability of her name, of all things. "Where are Shinju and Shinri?" Anthy asked directly, before they could get too far off on that tangent.

"I'm going to assume you mean the lovely ladies I locked outside," Yunan said cheerfully. "They're fine, of course, but I wanted a bit of privacy while we got to know one another."

Well. _That_ didn't sound ominous. Anthy leaned away from the desk and him by proxy as discreetly as possible.

"What business would a foreign magi have with me?" It was a stupid question, given how much she knew about what magi _did_ , but the only answer she could think of sounded even _more_ stupid. "I'm hardly King Vessel material," she insisted.

And it was true. Anthy did not have an ambitious bone in her entire body.

Before she was Anthy, she had been a typical upper-middle class girl with a single brother ten years her senior, allowing her to reap the benefits of being the baby girl of the family _and_ as good as an only child once he moved out of state. She had a fortunate lot in life, landing a job she enjoyed in college and generally being content in all areas of her life.

She had learned to live within her means, even before being reborn as a literal princess. She wasn't a person who needed very much to be happy, as long as her basic needs were met and she could laze around reading every now and then.

Unlike the girl who should have been in her place, she made no effort to take up the sword or prove her worth on the battlefield; given her father's dubious affections, she felt that it wouldn't be outrageous to assume that he would pick a good husband for her, or simply keep her at court and marry her off to one of the noble families.

At her core lay a certain kind of satisfied apathy that ultimately ruled her. She was fine with keeping the status quo, but could just as easily roll with any punches that came her way. It wasn't the type of life that tales of derring-do would be written about, but that was why she enjoyed reading good books—all of the thrill, with none of the effort. A perfect trade-off.

"You're a special _type_ of King Vessel," Yunan corrected her, causing the faint sense of horrified suspicion curling up in her stomach to intensify. "In fact, I arranged this meeting because I couldn't _believe_ just how perfect you are."

"I am no such thing," she insisted, eyes beginning to dart around. She could never outrun Judal, so Yunan could probably stop her in her tracks just as easily. She paused. _Judal._ "I already turned down the chance to prove myself to a djinn," she said, feeling a brief flash of triumph.

"I know," Yunan nodded, beaming at her. "You have absolutely no desire or any particular need for power. All you want is for you and the people you care about to be happy and live well. It's such a cute, modest dream."

That was…

 _Well_. That was a bit condescending, wasn't it?

"And what's wrong with that?" She stiffened her shoulders, feeling a little defensive. Judal had sneered at her explanation, but she had expected that from him.

"Ah, sorry, sorry," he waved a hand, looking sheepish. "I didn't mean to make fun of you. I sincerely respect that sort of dream. Not having some grand, sweeping ambition like your eldest brother or cousin can be a good thing, sometimes."

"See, you _say_ 'good'," she explained, "but nothing about this situation particularly feels like a good thing. It feels very dangerous, really, being locked in a library with a man who might be trying to talk me into storming a Dungeon."

"I'm not trying to talk you into anything," Yunan assured her.

"Oh, good," Anthy let out a soft sigh of relief. She must have misread him after all.

"Yes, I've already summoned the Dungeon," he continued, apparently oblivious to the look of sheer horror spreading across her face. "I mean, I decided to double-check that you were the type of young lady I thought you were before I did anything unavoidable, but—"

There was a distant crash, like thunder or a cannon being fired.

"Oh, drat," Yunan frowned for the first time since striking up this incredibly distressing conversation. "Judal arrived sooner than I thought he would." He heaved a sigh. "Well, I'm afraid we'll have to cut things short today, Princess. He's likely to try to banish _this_ Dungeon as well if we aren't quick, and we can't have that, now can we?"

"We most certainly _can_ ," she insisted, but Yunan had already stopped listening.

He raised his staff and brought it down to the ground sharply, and from beneath their feet came an ominous, groaning creak, like two massive doors being pushed open. Anthy had exactly two seconds to realize that _exactly that_ had just happened, and then the floor gave way beneath her, dropping her into the Dungeon.

Yunan had summoned it sideways, damn him. She was honestly impressed, until the doors slammed shut above her and she was left falling endlessly in the dark.

She bounced off what felt like a wall at one point, her left side left throbbing from the impact as she tumbled onwards, terrified of what might be waiting for her at the end. She remembered little of what the manga had in regards to details concerning Dungeons, since even the vague outline of the plot was growing fuzzy after more than a decade and a half without refreshing her memory of the source material.

Her cousins and brothers, however, were Dungeon Conquerors. She may not have known all the gritty details, but she knew that sometimes there were monsters and casualties in Dungeons, and that the Djinn usually had some cruel or capricious final criteria that needed to be filled that Judal usually had no way of knowing.

Whether that was simply laziness on the Oracle of Kou's part or Yunan's confidence in her was wholly misplaced remained to be seen. Anthy dearly hoped it was more the former case than the latter.

Before any of that, however, she would need to _stop falling_.

She stopped screaming around the time she had hit the wall, so there wasn't anything to hear other than the nervous gasps she was heaving, or any way to know just how long she had been in the darkness. She pressed her unseen palms over her eyes, changing absolutely nothing, and tried to calm down enough to think.

She had seen something like this in a movie, a lifetime ago, hadn't she? There had been a massive fan keeping the heroes in a perpetual free-fall. Maybe, she reasoned, maybe it was a Wind-based Djinn that was doing this.

As soon as she dragged her hands down her cheeks, however, she knew immediately that she had been wrong. The darkness was gone, now, and she was curled up on her throbbing side. With a sense of tired acceptance, she came to the conclusion that she had likely stopped falling as soon as she had 'bounced' early on.

Which meant the Djinn was messing with her senses.

"Oh, you're clever, aren't you?" Princess Kougyoku remarked.

Anthy levered herself upright and _stared,_ because it was the _real_ Princess Kougyoku. The one that should really be living her life, hair red as wine and looped up just as she remembered. And then she blinked, and went dead white, because Kougyoku had been replaced by a heartbreakingly familiar young woman in glasses and jeans and a t-shirt, her curly strawberry-blonde hair knotted into a bun.

It was _her._ The 'her' she had been before being reborn, at least.

"My, my," the Djinn said in a voice she hadn't heard in seventeen years. Slate blue eyes peered down at her, openly fascinated. "You really _don't_ want much at all, do you? You don't even want this form back, in particular."

She wanted to protest at that but… well, she was the type that adapted easily, no matter what. She had been Anthy almost as long as she had been that other person, ignoring the five-year gap. She was used to her new life, now. She was comfortable.

"Yes," the Djinn agreed, circling behind her and coming back around as her mother—her first mother, specifically, the overweight, black-haired smoker with a ruddy complexion and a gentle voice. Her throat grew tight for a moment, because for all Dimitia's kindness and childlike naïveté, she had _missed_ this woman.

 _But._

"Yes," the Djinn said again, this time in agreement. "It's just nice to see her again, isn't it? But you're fine with this much." She blinked again and Koubun was there, his usual polite smile in place. "But you don't have any big dreams. But you don't want power; if you had it, you would probably just squirrel it away and forget about it until it was needed, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," said Anthy, and she hoped very dearly that wasn't a mistake.

When she blinked again, the gigantic figure in front of her had taken the form of a giant, five-eyed blue man covered in elaborate jewelry and what she thought might actually be _dragon_ bones. "Yes," he said once more, this time slow and thoughtful. "It's not much of an ambition, but it's refreshingly pure. It shouldn't lead you astray."

"I don't really want to be led anywhere but back home," she requested meekly.

The Djinn hummed noncommittally, and she felt her shoulders sag. It had been a long shot, she knew, but it was still disappointing all the same.

"I think," the Djinn said, "that this might work out after all. I was skeptical at first, but I'm certain that should the worst happen I can steer you back onto the right path."

"The worst?" Anthy stared up at him, eyes going wide. "Wait, please, what do you mean by _'the worst,'_ that sounds kind of import—"

"I am Belial," he rolled on, folding his arm in front of him and tilting forward in a shallow bow. "The Djinn of Truth and Conviction."

Anthy had absolutely no recollection of him appearing in the manga _or_ the anime, but she had been drilled in manners since she first set foot in the palace. "My name is Chrysanthi, or Princess Kougyoku, depending on who you ask." She hesitated briefly. "You, um. You can call me Anthy if you want, I suppose." It was as close to the 'truth' as anything.

"Wonderful!" Yunan exclaimed, scaring the living daylights out of her. He had apparently been behind her _the entire time._ "I'm so happy you two are getting along."

"I don't think I like you," she finally managed to say, one hand pressed over her racing heart. "I really don't."

"I'm sure we just need to get to know each other a little better," Yunan disagreed blithely. "After all, Judal forced us to speed things up."

Judal had done absolutely nothing wrong, for once, and she fully intended to say as much until a violent tremor rocked through the Dungeon. If she had been standing, it would have sent her sprawling.

"Speak of the devil," sighed Yunan, shaking his head. "I hate to rush you, Belial, but we might want to leave before he rips his way in."

"Or we could just _let him in_ ," she suggested, to no avail.

"Right," said Belial, and she knew better than to think it was her point he saw the merit of. "Anthy, yes? Do you have any metal on your person? A weapon, a trinket, anything of that sort."

She thought for a moment, before carefully worming a hand into her robes without taking off the short cape, pulling loose a small golden medallion with her namesake carved into the front, hung from her neck on a thin black cord. It had been a gift from Domitia when she started getting her monthlies. "Will this work?"

"That's perfect," he said, and there was a sudden flash before he disappeared.

In the aftermath, she noticed two things: one was the large magical circle on the floor where he had been standing, and the other was the eight-pointed star carved into the formerly smooth underside of her medallion. She tucked it back under her robes, and wondered whether it felt a little heavier than normal.

"Well," Yunan said, clapping his hands together cheerfully. "This was a resounding success, I think." There was another ominous rumble, large chunks of stone beginning to get knocked loose. Yunan quickly began ushering her towards the floor-circle. "Time to leave, then."

"Can't I just wait for Judal to come take me home, please?" She tried to dig in her heels but it was too late; once she and Yunan were past the outer edge it activated, and once again the bottom dropped out of her world.

This time, however, there was no convenient darkness to hide her true predicament from her.

It wasn't quite as terrifying as tumbling helplessly forever through a void, though; if anything, it was nostalgically similar to being in a glass elevator. She was finally able to see the Dungeon's city briefly, sprawled out on the 'wall' that Belial had been blocking. It was beautiful, in a way, but then a slow, rhythmic banging began, like somebody was using a battering ram.

The 'platform' they were on abruptly accelerated, slamming them up into a portal.

She hid her eyes behind her sleeves, not certain she wanted to know what happened next, but the only difference she notice was that her ears had popped from the sudden change in pressure.

Yunan's hands were still on her shoulders, which he squeezed gently after a moment. When he spoke, his voice was amused. "There's no need to be scared, Princess. We're already here."

She wasn't at all sure she _wanted_ to be here, wherever 'here' was, but after a moment she did peek over her sleeves. She found herself staring at a charming little house backed by a massive natural wall of rock, and something in the pit of her stomach went cold with budding dread. The only light in this place seemed to be a dim glow given off by the building itself.

"This is…"

"My home," Yunan finished proudly, releasing her to head for the door. "Right at the bottom of the Great Rift."

"Of the Dark Continent?" Her voice was weak.

"The very same. Is there another one?" Yunan looked honestly interested, before shaking his head. "Well, let's shelve that for another time. I'm not sure I like the look of your complexion, Princess. Why don't we get you inside and I'll brew up a nice, hot pot of tea to set you to rights, hm?"

 _ **Fuck**_ _your tea,_ Anthy considered saying. She felt the familiar, hysterical stirrings of panic tickling the back of her throat, just like it had at the beginning of her unplanned countryside vacation with Hakuryuu last year.

" _Be nice, Anthy,"_ Belial murmured. His voice seemed to be coming from inside her head, apparently, and that was honestly the tipping point for her.

She reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose, taking a deep breath. And then another, and one more for good measure. Then she dropped her hand, gave Yunan a tired, flat look, and nodded curtly.

"Tea sounds perfect, right now," she conceded, and then she followed him into his house. He may be a strange man who had kidnapped her, put her into a potentially dangerous situation, and periodically ignored her complaints about those trespasses, but she wasn't stupid or stubborn enough to choose to stand around outside.

She had no idea if dangerous creatures avoided the Great Rift or if they populated it just as densely as the rest of the Dark Continent, kept at bay only by the arcane abilities of her ever so gracious 'host,' and she had exactly zero interest in finding out.

Yunan smiled at her beatifically, gallantly holding the door open for her. She tried, very hard, to hold on to her feelings of fear and distrust, but there was no stopping the instinctive relief she felt when he closed the door behind them, leaving them dubiously safe and secure in his undeniably cozy little cottage.

No longer driven by self-preservation, her legs immediately gave out on her. Yunan clucked and fussed and ushered her into a wooden chair before bustling off to make good on his promise.

Anthy put her head down on the table, and tried not to hyperventilate.

" _Deep breaths,"_ Belial advised.

Anthy covered her face with her sleeves, and laughed. It was high and strained, but it helped take some of the edge off.

* * *

 **Next Time:** _She was also, he noted with no small amount of affection, without doubt the absolute worst swordsman he had ever seen._


	3. Chapter 2: The Slings and Arrows of

**The Cuckoo**

* * *

 _Chapter 2: The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Mediocrity_

" _Perhaps to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people… Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked."_

—Frances Hodgson Burnett, _A Little Princess_

* * *

By the time Yunan had finished preparing the tea, he found his coerced houseguest fast asleep. She was likely run down from the strain of Belial's trial and, he was self-aware enough to admit, his own magical scans. He had littered the silent, probing spells all through their initial conversation in that library, and that kind of magic could take a heavy toll, if rushed; Judal hadn't given him the opportunity to be more careful, unfortunately.

He had his eye on the youngest child of Ren Koutoku for some time, which was only natural; he had likely been the only magi present to notice her birth. He had roaming Kou searching for the newborn Judal, at that time, and had nearly missed the phenomena entirely. If he hadn't gotten lost in one of the seedier neighborhoods of the capital that day, he likely would have been utterly oblivious.

It had been a subtle event, he remembered, like hearing a cork being pulled from the mouth of a bottle on the other side of a crowded room. In regards to the worldwide event that had been Sinbad's birth, years before, it was next to nothing; just a slight ruffle of the Rukh, a brief soap-bubble of energy swelling and popping before settling back into the normal flow.

Still, he had gone to investigate.

Over the next few years, he was glad he had; it took him nearly ten months to realize that her strange, adult-sized reserves of Rukh and magoi most resembled his, albeit with none of his power. The little baby likely remembered her last life, and if the bright, content—albeit, slightly confused—pulse of her energy was any indication, it had been a good life, with few regrets.

He was too polite to ask for details, but the curiosity endured.

Once the main mystery had been solved and he confirmed that Al Thamen had taken Judal, he had lost interest and gone back to wandering for a while. By the time his travels brought him back around to Kou and he thought to check in on his fellow reincarnation, the girl had apparently been identified as royal stock and carted off to the palace.

He could hardly just go traipsing around _there_ , filthy pit of tainted Rukh and offensively defensive magic that it was, and had continued on. Still, when he had seen the direction that the world had started to take, seen the stirrings of clashing hopes and dreams ready themselves once again, he had become concerned.

His concern had only compounded when Belial outright rejected Sinbad a year and a half ago, unceremoniously tossing the King of Sindria out of his Dungeon like so much trash. Belial had exacting standards, Yunan knew, but his power might be sorely needed very soon.

He had thought of the princess then, remembered how pure and bright she had been all those years ago, and a seed of a plan had been planted in his mind.

Granted, there had been no way of telling just how pure she still was, after years of being raised at the heart of Al Thamen itself, but there had been no harm in checking. Judal, of all people, had given him a window of opportunity, when a botched spell had sent the princess and one of her cousins off to a rural, isolated part of the Kou countryside.

She had been untouched, spiritually speaking, and after two days of eavesdropping on the two royals, he came to the conclusion that she would be a phenomenally difficult young lady to tempt with adventure, riches, or fame. She enjoyed a sedentary lifestyle, but had no problem with being asked to perform menial labor by the village chief's pregnant wife, and hadn't breathed a word of it to the guards that retrieved them.

In short, she was perfect.

He was able to get a better read on her in the library, no pun intended: she was mentally resilient and patently unambitious, just as he had hoped. She was shrewd and kind, for the most part, but needed little pushes here and there to really accomplish anything of note.

It all came together, though unfortunately there was no way to hide his involvement and one of the princes had gotten into the other Dungeon he had first raised on the palace grounds as a distraction. Belial was out in the world, which was the important thing, and now it was up to Yunan to make sure his King Vessel was prepared enough to stay alive and _keep_ him out.

He set the pot of tea aside, and gently began undoing the intricate network of knots and pins fastening the young lady's hair in place, smiling softly down at her exhausted visage.

He would start tomorrow.

* * *

A day and a half later, several things were abundantly clear about Anthy: she was incredibly docile and suggestible after a good night's sleep, she didn't waste time feeling sorry for herself, and, if the wary looks she kept shooting him were any indication, she thought he was completely insane.

 _ **Thunk.**_

"Oh, _th'ankh Gahwd."_

She was also, he noted with no small amount of affection, without doubt the absolute _worst_ swordsman he had ever seen. They had switched over to projectiles for the safety of everybody present after she had managed to send her practice blade whirling off into the dark of the Rift.

A sling, he had assured her, was much easier to carry and conceal anyways. In a pinch, it could even be used as a garrote, so it was more versatile than the traditional King Vessel weapon too.

Her baleful gaze had gone flat and disbelieving as she had turned it from the point where the sword had vanished to him. He chalked it up as a win.

He suspected Belial was sneakily correcting her perception to get her such good results, but didn't have the heart to knock the triumphant glow off her face. She wasn't much of a runner, not with her cloistered and pampered upbringing, but she was managing her own against some low-level monsters he dragged down into the Great Rift for her to practice on.

Her current foe, sprawled out a few dozen feet away, was about the size of a small mule, albeit with more teeth and stingers than a mule might ever need.

He made a small noise of interest, which had nothing to do with her conquest and everything to do with what had followed.

"What?" She straightened up, wiping sweat from her brow. "Oh. It slipped out again, didn't it?" She gave him a small shrug. The exclamation and others like it were a fascinating sort of response that seemed to be creeping into her normal habits. It was like a coat of paint chipping off and showing peeks of the person she might once have been. "It doesn't really mean much; it's like… just something you exclaim. 'Thank god,' that's all." She ran her thumb over one of her weapon's cords. "It's funny, I haven't spoken that language for ages. Not since I stopped being able to explain it away as baby-babble, at least."

"I imagine you've always had to watch your tongue, in the center of Kou's court." He had collected at least seven exclamatory phrases from her strange, guttural language in the last five hours alone. He suspected some of them had been less than the most… _flowery_ of phrases, purposely mistranslated.

"Oh yes," Anthy agreed, a strange, amused smile stealing briefly over her lips. "Always."

"What kind of god did you worship?" Yunan asked, because she still looked a bit winded and he was a curious, curious magi.

She laughed, short and bright, before shaking her head. "Sorry." She coughed, and composed herself. "It's just… there was always a lot of controversy about that sort of question, and 'worship' is a strong word for the degree of belief I was raised with. The first time, I mean."

He frowned, swinging his leg in the air where it dangled from his perch. "I see."

"Give me a minute, I'll try to sum up two thousand years of bickering." She began winding the sling around her hand. "That god used to be the great and terrible type; tests, sacrifices, world-wide purges, that sort of thing. Then—and this is where at least two major sects of that god's followers formed—He apparently became His own son in human form, and took all the sins of humanity onto his own shoulders. After that, the god is seen as a much more merciful being, compared to the previous incarnation."

Yunan rubbed his chin. "I feel like I'm missing a great deal of details."

"An entire book's worth," Anthy confirmed, hobbling over to collapse on his front steps. She tilted her head back, squinting her eyes against the gloom above them. "…somewhere upwards of sixty books I think, actually. But take that number with a grain of salt; like I said, 'worship' is a strong word. My parents always said they raised me _Cah-th'lik_ , because they wanted some sort of moral standard when I was little and impressionable. They were brought up with the same beliefs, but they weren't passionate about it. _Dah'd_ didn't even believe in that god—um, my first father didn't, I mean."

"No wonder you remained uninterested in Al Thamen's dogma."

"Nngh…" She grimaced, holding a hand in front of her with her palm facing downwards, and wobbled it from side to side. He had no idea what the gesture was meant to imply, but luckily she spoke up. "Well, predestination versus free will is kind of a tender philosophical issue, in or out of the religious realm. Or, it was." She huffed. "In my last life. I feel like I need to add that in repeatedly."

Yunan's foot stopped swinging. "…and your opinion?"

"My opinion is split," she said, truthful without reservation. "I grew up in a country based upon an ideal of freedom that it pursued at… well, at great cost to a lot of people, but with some benefits too, I guess. But freedom through despair and insanity seems like a raw deal, and… like I said, I never really had any interest in being a King Vessel or a fighter." She shrugged her shoulders. "Al Thamen has never been very interested me and the feeling is mutual, except for maybe some of the individual members."

"Judal," he recognized.

"And some of the ones that hung around him the most," she agreed, letting her head fall back against the boards of his porch. "Cult members can be surprisingly charismatic when they want to be."

"That _is_ generally how a cult endures and grows," he agreed. She had a surprisingly glib tongue, once she started shedding years of conditioned formality. He would be a liar if he said he didn't enjoy it. "I must admit I'm a little surprised your cousin has let it continue to do so."

"And there it is," Anthy mumbled under her breath, aparrently having expected the thinly veiled question. He had seen princesses roll their eyes before, but she managed to pack an extra bit of spite into the gesture, before raising her voice to a more audible level. "The Emperor grew up with them, same as I did. He says he has an 'understanding' with them, and I never had the right to ask any details other than those."

"Fair enough," Yunan ceded. After a moment, he spoke again, cheer slipping back into his voice. "You know what _isn't_ fair?"

"Oh no," she murmured, closing her eyes.

"It's about time for me to drag another practice partner down for you. This time, let it feed on the last one you killed, so I don't have to launch the corpse away. I'm a feeble old man, you know."

" _Yor-uh fiih-bul ohld_ _ **bass't'rd**_."

"What does that one mean?"

"It means 'help me up first,' that's all."

* * *

"I've gone _fuhl Ma'hou-Shou'jo,_ " Anthy announced grimly, two days later.

She narrowed all four of her eyes—two new ones stacked on her brow where the little flower had been painted, the first time they met in person—down at her body, as if it had betrayed her. "You're never supposed to go _fuhl Ma'hou-Shou'jo,_ " she griped, but the hands that ran down the puffy, floaty, full skirt of her Djinn Equip form's dress were gentle with a sort of awed disbelief.

Yunan wasn't sure what ' _fuhl Ma'hou-Shou'jo_ ' entailed, or how that level was reached, but he thought it was a good look for her. The ensemble had a decidedly more Western flair than the silk robes neatly folded back in his home, though the skirt she was sinking her fingers into with poorly concealed delight swept to the floor.

It was white—as was her hair now—and bared her pale shoulders, with slim, cap-like sleeves encircling her biceps. There was some manner of corsetry around her waist, drawing some attention to the bosom that she usually went to such lengths to disguise. Altogether, it made for a very lovely picture, if you ignored all the bones.

Aside from the eyes and the lavish gold collar wrapped around her throat practically dripping gems, the only real 'touch' that belied Belial's presence in the merger were the excess of bones worked into the dress. The aforementioned corset had a creamy pink base material, but was rigidly encircled by what appeared to be the upper half of a rib cage, broken and bent to fit into an attractive curve. Polished little fangs and miniature bones—from hands and feet or bestial equivalents—were sewn into the dress like beads.

The overall effect could still be quite lovely, if one didn't examine the details too closely. And ignored the large skeletal wings at her back.

"' _Fuhl Ma'hou-Shou'jo'_ does sound terribly ominous," he agreed, circling around her. "Which reminds me, my dear, just how much do you know about magic?"

"Why does _that_ remind you—…no, you know what? Never mind. I don't want to know." She shook her head, all four eyes rolling. "Humanity," she began, in the solemn textbook-tone of a lesson half-recalled, "cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain power, something of equal value must be lost. In magic, that natural law of equivalent exchange is carried out through the transmutation of the magoi a person can harvest from the Rukh around them."

"I've never heard it put quite like that," said Yunan.

"You wouldn't have," Anthy agreed, her face serious even as her eyes danced with some sort of mischief just beyond his understanding. "From there, the form that the magic takes depends on two things: personal affinity, and whether or not a Tool is being used at the same time. The second factor can include everything from slightly modified glasses to the Metal Vessels of Djinns, and are usually attuned to one of the type of magic on a set basis. So, for example, let's say a magician is attuned most closely with water; they can still use powerful fire magic if they have the right Tool. In the cases of King Vessels, a Djinn Equip is usually necessary before they can use Extreme Magic. Which is… essentially exactly what it sounds like."

"Correct." He smiled at her. "You have an excellent memory."

"Judal has a memory like a sieve," she informed him. "Prince Hakuryuu and I merely heard his lessons being repeated over and over again as a fringe benefit of him latching onto us." She looked exasperated. "All I really know beyond that is the affinities themselves. There's Heat, Water, Light, Wind, Lightning, Sound, Strength, and Life Magic, though I never really understood that last one very much."

"I suppose it's best to work with a blank slate," he commented.

Her eyes narrowed. "…I thought Belial formed illusions." She rubbed her temples, frowning thoughtfully. "Wouldn't that be more in line with Sound or Light Magic? Or _maybe_ Lightning Magic, if the trick is inside my brain and you wanted to get _by'aloh-jih-cahl_ about it."

"If that was all he did, cert—"

"No." Anthy cut him off, obviously realizing something. "No, if it _was_ just that, then he shouldn't have been able to know my first mother's face." She froze. _"Suhnuva bih'ch,"_ she murmured, a phrase she had thus far refused to translate for him. "It wasn't just my _mind_ he was fooling with those illusions, was it?" Her hand dropped to cover her heart, expression turning thoughtful.

"You," he told her, unswervingly delighted by her leap of intuition, "are taking the all of the fun out of my explanation."

"My sole purpose in this world is to ruin the hopes of others, just ask any of my sisters." Anthy shook her head again. "No. No, we are not getting lost in banter again." It _had_ been an issue these past few days, he could admit. "Oh _Gahwd,_ what kind of Extreme Magic is a Djinn like this even capable of?"

"The kind," he said with deceptive lightness, "that one generally does not want in the hands of an ambitious man."

"And I'm neither of those. Good work." She flashed him a thumbs-up, but still looked a little shaken. "…that was pretty vague, though."

"Well," Yunan sighed. "Let's just say the current version of history recorded for the last period that Belial had a King Vessel is… less than accurate. On a world-wide scale."

" _He manipulates memories too?!"_ Her voice might have been called a shriek, if it had been above whisper-level.

"It has more in common with fooling the senses than you think." Yunan eyed her worriedly. He did not like the look of her complexion. "Of course, I had to assist with the execution given how much magoi it required, and it still ended in the death of both myself and the unfortunate King Vessel. So I must caution you against using such an ability lightly. Actually, most of his techniques are quite, ah, unilaterally aggressive, shall we say."

" _Hoh'lee shi'ht,_ Yunan, I am not interested in _reht'cohn-ning_ a world event," she snapped, staring at him with wide, slightly hysterical eyes. "'Using such an ability lightly,'" she muttered under her breath, scoffing. _"Jeez'us Kraist._ When would that ever be needed?" She paused. "Why _was_ it needed?"

"There was…" he paused, considering his word choice. "There was a _ringleader_ , I suppose you could call her, that previously led Al Thamen a few centuries ago. The world was brought to the brink of all-consuming war, before that woman was damaged enough that the organization had to fall back and regroup. Still, they had left a dark mark, and Belial's previous King Vessel felt that it would be better to erase the event entirely, to prevent any collateral damage and limit the spread of Depravity."

" _Jeez'us,"_ she said again, casting her eyes down and ruffling a hand through her bangs. "…you just answered a question that's been worrying me for most of my life in Kou," she admitted, but didn't allow him to ask about it before barreling on. "Also, the way you said something a minute ago made it sound like there are _multiple_ Extreme Magics you want firmly in the hands of an unambitious woman."

"Belial's control of the senses can be utilized for their destruction, on a body-wide or limited scale," he counted off on one of his fingers. "But you may need a magician to help you craft a Tool for narrower applications. He can temporarily stave off a person's fall into Depravity through mental and sensory manipulation, but that is merely a means of delaying the process rather than a proper cure unless he has complete dominion over the individual."

"So _that's_ how he's 'certain that he can steer me back onto the right path,' should the worst happen." Her frown tightened.

He took that as his cue to continue. "His remaining Extreme Magic, can be utilized to sever the spirit from the flesh and banish it to another realm entirely. It was how we managed to get the Witch of Al Thamen out of the picture back then, though it likely didn't send her as far away as it would have a lesser soul."

"Oh, so what you're saying is that I can now banish people to the _fuh'king Shah'doh Rehl'm,"_ she said, finally smiling and nodding with suspiciously blank eyes.

"Possibly?" Yunan tentatively agreed, not understanding her reference.

"Yeah," she said brightly, disrupting her Djinn Equip and returning to her normal appearance. _"Noh'p."_

"What?" He knew the translation of that one, but it contradicted the affirmative answer she had just given.

She pulled the cord of her medallion over her head and jogged over to him, closing his fingers over it and then patting them gently, still smiling. _"Noh'p,"_ she said again, just as cheerfully. She began to climb up the steps of his house.

"Anthy, dear, you can't just—"

" _Noh'p,"_ she insisted over her shoulder, before slamming the door shut behind her.

As Belial manifested, staring after her with a bemused and slightly offended expression, Yunan could hear the distinct sound of heavy furniture being shoved in front of the door.

He sighed and shook his head. Sometimes, he mused, getting everything you asked for could have some undeniable drawbacks.

* * *

"I hate you," she informed him the next day.

It might have been because he had easily dismantled her barricade after she had locked herself in his hose and crawled under the covers of her bedding in order to curl up and chant _'no, no, no,'_ to herself, again and again until he dragged her back out. It might have been because he had forgotten to give her an armguard before they started on archery, and the inside of her left arm was pink and tender by the time he remembered. He _was_ healing it now, to be fair. It might have even been because he still refused to send her back to the Kou Empire, though the request this morning had been half-hearted at best.

But most likely, it was because she had a flair for the dramatic, in Yunan's humble opinion. Her Rukh was still pure as the driven snow, so he highly doubted her feelings of discontent were anywhere near that level.

"No you don't," he told her, gently rubbing over her abused skin in silent apology.

"No I don't," she agreed, sighing. "But right now I really, _really_ do not like you. Or the fact that you conned me into being the King Vessel of a Djinn with…" She choked back what sounded like a strangled laugh. "With semi-phenomenal, nearly cosmic powers. _Jeez'us Kraist,_ how is this my life?"

"Oh, Anthy," he shook his head, smiling genially as he finished and released her arm, now uniformly milky white once more. "I didn't con you. 'Conning' carries the implication of you making a choice based on false assumptions," he explained. "Belial was the one making the choice, and he was in possession of all the facts."

"Really, really, _really,_ do not like you," she reiterated, but she pulled on the armguard and restrung her bow without prompting. She was, however, eyeing the floating target he had conjured for her as though she was imagining a stylish, wide-brimmed hat on top of it.

Yunan could live with that.

"I _know_ ," he heard her huff under her breath. "Stop _bah'k-see't_ shooting, I want to try on my own."

She had also been speaking to Belial much more often today, which he took as a good sign. They had likely had a conversation without him last night, as she fully digested the scope of the responsibility they had shoved onto her and the implications of the necessity of it in the first place.

 _Whump._

"See?" There was a bright, delighted note of triumph, even if she had only hit the third ring out of the five arrayed on the target. "I told you I could."

"Seeing you two getting along so well really does warm this old man's heart," he sighed.

" _Buhl-_ _shi'ht_ _,_ you would need to have one to warm in the first place," Anthy said, not even looking at him. She was more focused on drawing back another arrow and eyeballing the target. She no longer answered any of his questions about her strange and guttural language, which he thought was just a touch petty. In this case, he knew enough to guess it was a phrase of incredulous disbelief.

"Brat," he said, smiling in spite of the insult. She had come a long way from the nervously polite princess he had first met. It wouldn't take more than a few more days before he could confidently send her off into the world.

"Kidnapper," she shot back without heat, and let her arrow fly. It hit one ring closer this time, and she turned, giving him a very unladylike flash of her tongue.

He, being a mature and peerlessly wizened magi, stuck his own out right back without so much as a second thought. Her shoulders shook with poorly suppressed laughter as she whirled back to face her target.

She could say whatever she wanted, and likely did still resent him to some extent, but Yunan had countless years experience on his side. He knew how to charm anybody, given enough time. If that had been his sole goal, then he was confident that in a month or two he could probably build up a rapport to rival the closeness she was rumored to share with the Emperor of Kou.

However, no matter what the smothering, unchanging darkness of the Great Rift might make one think, time did not stop here. The world was still turning, Al Thamen was still making strange, minor movements, and countries were scraping against each other in rapidly decreasing neutral countries. He had the creeping suspicion the Witch may have already returned, sometime within the last decade. So, he did not have a month to waste with her, unfortunately.

She needed to see the world on her own, experience the tension, and, most importantly, let Belial do the same.

By the end of that day she still needed Belial's aid and a few minutes of preparation with the bow and arrow to make a shot, seven times out of ten. She _could_ use one, if push came to shove, but he was pleased he had started her with a sling first. It would be much easier for her to restock on projectiles, using that.

He gave her another three days of practice, over all, but the results remained consistent. She wasn't be able to safely use her archery skills against beasts he brought down into the Rift, so they focused on identifying vulnerable areas on moving targets, and a few grappling and escape tricks. She _was_ a pretty young woman who would appear to be travelling alone, after all.

Surprisingly, he found that some of them were tactics she already knew; he thought perhaps the ladies that he had locked out of the library the day they met had taught her, until she admitted she had been trained in the techniques at something she reluctantly translated as 'rape-defense class.'

She did, however, learn some finger- and nose-breaking tricks from her twin guards that she ever-so-innocently offered to show him. He respectfully declined.

Nine days after he originally plucked her from the heavily guarded heart of her home, he was finally willing to let her go again. Belial could take care of her, now that she could manage at least that much on her own. He didn't inform _her_ of his decision, naturally, because it wouldn't be kind to raise her hopes unduly.

It wasn't as though he was planning to send her off to _Kou_ , after all.

Still, perhaps he could have been a little less circumspect about his intentions, he mused, before dismissing the thought. He was a man of few and simple pleasures, and catching people by surprise, off-kilter and unsure, was one of them.

"So, why am I learning how to make one of these?" Anthy craned her neck to watch him work as he assembled the circle. "And which one is it? It looks sort of like the one Belial drew, but with a lot more…" she cast about for the right words. "More detail, I guess."

"Well," Yunan hummed as he added a few more characters to the outer ring. "Some broad magical matrices can be directed through sheer power, such as what I did when Belial gave us a way out of the Dungeon. Other configurations need to be fine-tuned for success. It's one of those case-by-case issues for magicians."

"I'm still not a magician," she reminded him helpfully.

He hopped out of the circle, mindful not to touch any of the lines. "You don't need to be to make use of this," he said truthfully. "Here, come look at this, I'll show you." He waved her over to his side.

She heaved a soft sigh and pushed herself up from where she had been sitting on his steps again. _"Okay_ , _"_ she said, bending forward slightly to squint at the circle through the dim light. "What am I looking a—"

Nimbly, he swept the pole of his staff into her ankles and bumped her forward with his hip, sending her tumbling into a heap inside the circle. She sputtered, pushing herself to her knees and turning to him, likely getting ready to yell.

He didn't give her the chance.

"Think fast," he advised her, and released the levitation spell he had been using to keep a travel-pack floating above the circle, out of the little dome of visibility he had carved from the Rift's darkness. It fell into her lap with a dull _umph_ , knocking the wind from her sails. The lines of the circle began to glow, first faintly and then quickly growing in intensity.

"Yunan," she coughed, eyes squinting against the sudden light. "You are an absolute—"

What, exactly, he was would have to be addressed the next time they met, because with one final flash of light, she was gone.

* * *

 **Next Time:** _"I think," their new guest said, with genteel aplomb, "that I would definitely appreciate a greater degree of alcohol in my life right now."_


	4. Chapter 3: When in Reim

**The Cuckoo**

* * *

 _Chapter 3: When in Reim_

" _It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it."_

―Frances Hodgson Burnett, _A Little Princess_

* * *

Titus shifted, glancing at the sky from his place beside Lady Scheherazade once more.

"Relax," she bade him. "Yunan is frequently unpredictable, but rarely tardy."

Mu Alexius muttered something under his breath and crossed his arms, leaning back against one of the columns caging in the open balcony. He couldn't hear what the imposing Fanalis man said, given that they were on opposite ends of the room, and thought it best not to wonder too deeply. Despite having glimpses of Mu for years and years as his body gestated, the man was a stranger.

More importantly, he looked at Titus as though he wasn't even there, most of the time.

He was mercifully spared the awkward labor of finding some sort of rebuttal to his mother or her staunchest defendant by the linked transport seal finally beginning to glow.

"—ly crazy old bastard!"

The walls echoed slightly with the force of the newcomer's… unique introduction. As the glare died down, they found themselves looking at a young woman sprawled on the now unmarked floor, clutching a large, weathered pack to her. She had hair as blonde as his or Lady Scheherazade's that was twisted back into two large buns, pale skin, and pink eyes practically burning with indignation. Those flames gradually dwindled down to nothing as she took in her new surroundings, and her grip on the bag tightened ever so slightly.

"…Yunan didn't inform you where he was sending you," Lady Scheherazade surmised.

"Yunan didn't inform me he was even _considering_ sending me anywhere," the young woman said, her voice much more pleasant at a lower volume. She climbed to her feet, revealing that she was dressed in a large white linen shirt cut for a man that fell to her knees. It was closed up to her collarbone with small bronze buttons and cinched at the waist with a thick belt of what he thought might be fine Parthevian leather.

She was barefoot and, he realized with a start, shorter than Titus himself, despite being older than him in all senses. She was likely around Lady Scheherazade's height, give or take an inch. She straightened her spine and raised her chin minutely, and for a moment it seemed as though she was standing as tall as Mu.

"My name is Chrysanthi," she said, which made sense, given her coloring. "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you've been expecting me, Lady Magi."

"Indeed I have," his mother nodded, a rare smile tugging at her mouth. "I see that Yunan is still as inscrutable as ever. He called in an old favor and asked that I host you here in Reim for a time."

Chrysanthi was silent for a moment. "Here as in this country, or…?"

"Personally," Lady Scheherazade specified.

"Oh." She shifted, and he noticed that the laced-up sandals she was wearing didn't quite fit either; she had apparently been entirely outfitted by the other magi. Something about that sat wrong with Titus, and he felt his mother's amusement stir at the back of his mind as she noticed the sentiment.

"Come," she beckoned to the young woman. "I would be willing to wager that after being secluded with that old hermit, you wouldn't turn down a proper bath."

"Oh, you have no idea." Her shoulders slumped, and a soft, relieved smile spread over her face. "I'm just happy to see the sun again, honestly."

"I can make a very good guess," his mother said, a strange, nostalgic note of wryness slipping into her tone. "Is there anything else I can offer you beyond that, before I return to my duties for the day?"

The young woman hefted her bag onto one shoulder, her expression turning thoughtful.

"I think," their new guest said, with genteel aplomb, "that I would definitely appreciate a greater degree of alcohol in my life right now."

Mu finally perked up from where he had been giving her a wary, measured once over. "You'll enjoy your time here, then."

"This is Mu Alexius, one of Reim's foremost warriors." Lady Scheherazade introduced them when the young woman turned to look at the Fanalis. "And Titus Alexius will be your guide while you are here," she finally drew attention to him, and he stood up straight, bowing slightly to Chrysanthi. "I will have a maid escort you to the baths, and he will join you for a midday repast when you are finished. We can speak more tomorrow, so please enjoy the rest of the day as you wish."

"Thank you." She seemed to be taking this situation with amazing sanguinity. Titus wondered if that said something about the young woman herself, or the company she had been keeping as of late. His mother had many conflicting feelings when it came to her fellow magi, and shared very few of them with him.

Also, Chrysanthi's first words had painted a rather vibrant picture in his mind's eye.

He realized belatedly that both his mother and the guest had left, each flanked by a few female attendants. A small snap of panic flared low in his stomach, but he quashed it ruthlessly. This was a test run, of sorts; they knew nothing about this young woman other than the fact that Yunan vouched for her moral character. Gleaning any details from her whatsoever would be good practice before he left for Magnostadt.

He could handle it.

He glanced over at Mu and opened his mouth—to bid him good-bye or assure Mu of his resolve or perhaps even ask for advice—but the older man was already turning away. He leapt from the balcony without so much as a single look back.

Titus sighed, and turned to head over to the kitchens and make arrangements for their guest's meal with the chef.

* * *

The food looked like something out of a fairytale, and Anthy did not bat so much as a single lash.

That wasn't something she could really help; while it was a gorgeous, delicious spread, with dishes from all sorts of countries, it was also basically old hat for her. The Kou Empire was a sprawling, luxurious monster that subsumed and assimilated the countries around it, reaching out further to incorporate foreign aspects of cultures that were beyond its reach. Or beyond its reach for the moment, at least. There were some aspects of culture, naturally, that at their core were _purely_ Kou, from back before her uncle ever began extending his influence.

Food was not one of them.

If she was entirely true to herself, the bath had been far more succulent than the feast. She had grown spoiled as a natural matter of course, and it had ben unspeakably wonderful to lounge in a large, steaming pool at her leisure and emerge smelling like a well-kept garden. The scents that the maids had selected had been more cloyingly sweet when compared to the gentle, subtler ones Koubun usually selected for her, and beggars could not be choosers. Not even beggar princesses.

On that note, she had made sure to make all the necessary compliments; she had been raised to have impeccable manners if she ever met foreign dignitaries, and Titus definitely counted. It was, she admitted privately, a bit of an unfair match-up. A spy wasn't much good when you _knew_ he was a spy, and technically a newborn as well. She didn't remember much in the way of specifics, but she knew that he had been around two years old, chronologically, when he met Aladdin in the original story.

Given the strange, skewed version of world events she was living through, it was entirely possible that Titus had been 'born' yesterday.

"I didn't realize Artemyra was so culturally open," Titus remarked politely, rousing her from her musings.

"They probably are, because of the Seven Seas Alliance," she mentioned, taking a sip of sweet, blessedly alcoholic cordial. Yunan had only had tea and water in his house, out of personal taste. "But I have no idea how true that is. I've never been there."

"You haven't?" He perked up, and she could see him mentally scramble to follow up on that. She wanted to pat his head and praise him.

"No." She took a bite of a familiar type of spiced rice dish and tried not to grimace, because it was bland and overcooked compared to the original Kou version of the dish. "Despite the name and appearance, I wasn't born there, either." She downed the rest of her cordial, washing out the disappointing aftertaste. "My mother was a slave that was sold to a brothel halfway across the world from her homeland."

" _Sneaky,"_ Belial murmured to her, but it lacked any sort of disapproving edge. It was entirely the truth, after all.

"Oh…" Titus paused awkwardly. He probably only knew about whores and harlots on paper or by word of mouth. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"She's not one now," Anthy said with a shrug, delicately dabbing at her mouth with the napkin provided. "My father saw to that."

"Are you finished?" Titus seemed eager to change the subject. She couldn't blame him; that was a fairly heavy subject to just lay on a person, which was exactly why she had done so. With that much said, he would be hesitant to dredge up much more about her family's circumstances.

She _could_ just come out and say that she was a Princess of Kou and desired transport back to her family, but the veritable superpowers of Reim and Kou didn't always get along, and she saw no reason to put Hakuyuu in debt to Scheherazade and Reim's current Emperor when Yunan was already calling in a favor.

Plus one other small issue, of course.

"Shall we go tour the city, now?" She excused herself with as much grace as she could, smoothing down the flowing fabric of the dress given to her, which she had been told was called a stola. That was a funny aspect of this world she had noted, and actually understood after thinking it over for some time. There was a quote that she had once heard or read at some point, regarding her mother tongue:

" _English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary."_

The language that spanned the entire world here took that sentiment a step further. Words and phrases were commonly patchworked onto each other, some sharing no common roots or linguistic similarities whatsoever, but held together all the same by the initial iron-clad translation spellwork and preserved until the meaning was universally attached to the word, regardless of culture. It was how the clearly Japanese suffixes came into play, at least on the count of person-to-person formalities.

Explicit ranks such as 'King' and 'Princess' and 'Lord' were more formal than tacking a '-sama' onto the end of somebody's name; she still called Hakuyuu 'Yuu-niisama' in private, for example, as did Hakuryuu. Kouha was in the habit of calling her 'An-An' and referred to their elder brothers as 'En-nii' and 'Mei-nii,' while Hakuwa called her 'Acchan,' but those were special cases.

It had briefly fascinated her, when she was learning how to read and write, but so little was known about the beginning of this world that asking questions like 'why is this word totally different from a similar one' had been useless. Etymology was hardly her passion these days, anyways.

So, the stola was a stola, end of discussion.

"Absolutely," Titus agreed, jarring her from her woolgathering once again.

" _You shouldn't have had so much cordial,"_ Belial murmured, just a touch disapproving.

She kept her outward expression pleasant, but hoped the deep wave of steadfast disbelief she directed his way was properly conveyed. Her time with Yunan had dumped a significant amount of stress onto her shoulders between her training and Belial and the magi himself; she deserved a little something to take the edge off.

Also, there was no conceivable way she was going to be able to walk the streets of _the capital of Reim_ without a little something-something to grease the metaphorical wheels.

Honestly, that man was an enigma. She had no idea what Yunan thought he was doing, sending her _here_ of all places. A small part of her charitably recognized that he most likely had thought that her appearance and common sense would serve her well and that Reim would be as safe a starting point as any, with another magi looking out for her. And that he had no real way of knowing about her… personal views on this particular country. The majority of her, however, had been simmering with resentment until she had banked the flames of her ire with an entire pitcher of cordial.

More than just not wanting to inconvenience her family or homeland, the heart of the issue was that she held a deep grudge against this country. It was on her mother's behalf, because Domitia was too kind and satisfied with her current lot in life to be properly resentful about being sold like an animal. Anthy had always—in this life and the last—only been able to truly nurse a grudge for somebody else's sake, and this was one that wouldn't be erased any time soon, she was sure.

It also didn't help that she had been to Italy on a family trip in her former life, and could vividly imagine what the buildings around her would look like, aged and ruined and rebuilt around the husks of an age gone by.

 _Yes, your city is gorgeous, but you know what would_ _ **really**_ _make it perfect? A little fire and anarchy._

Anthy was a mellow drunk, so the alcohol was actually _helping_ her not blurt out pithy, snide comments such as that one. The buzz from the cordial managed to sweeten her disposition enough for her to fall back on carefully trained habits. Yunan had given her a brief break from the life of a princess, but it was honestly so deeply ingrained into her that she _couldn't_ just pretend she was the young woman she had been before Domitia brought her into this world.

So she made the best of the situation, strolling along with one hand tucked into the crook of Titus's arm. He was, she noticed, just about Kouha's height and even more effeminate than her closest brother; she had honestly mistaken him for a woman, upon first glance.

The way his eyes were sparkling as he took in the sights—obviously for the first time—right along side her didn't exactly boost her opinion of this country very much. It did, however, lend a little extra buoyancy to her mood. She was actually humming lightly under her breath as they paced the perimeter of the Coliseum, and it was even partly out of good cheer, rather than just a desperate attempt to drown out the roar of the crowd and what, exactly, was likely going on inside.

"Would you like to watch—" Titus began.

"No," she said, holding on to her pleasant state of mind with the mental equivalent of a white-knuckled death-grip. "Let's go visit the Forum Remanum instead." Ancient temples won out over needless death and showmanship without question.

"Are you interested in politics then?" Her escort was probably trying his best to be subtle and slick, she realized.

"Not really," she told him, totally honest. "But I find myself inextricably tangled up in them despite my best efforts. So, I might as well keep abreast of them all the same. 'Know thy enemy,' as the saying goes."

"I'm not familiar with the saying," he told her, brow furrowing slightly. "How _does_ it go?"

 _Oh._ That's right, she realized, of course he wouldn't be familiar with it. This world didn't have a Sun Tzu equivalent, or at least didn't have one _yet_.

"Know thy enemy and know thyself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster," she recited, more than likely bastardizing the half-remembered quote. She hadn't exactly been a fanatic student of ancient Chinese military strategy, after all. There was more to it, she knew, but frankly she had been lucky to remember even that much and Titus had no way of calling her out on it.

"That's very sage advice," he told her, smiling. It made him _even prettier_ , which she hadn't thought possible up until that moment. "You should share it with one of the philosophers milling around."

 _I thought that was an ancient Greece sort of thing,_ she didn't say, because she had sobered up a little bit after that thoughtless slip of the tongue. "Maybe another day," was her diplomatic substitute. _When the magical barbarian horde-substitutes are looting your ships and sacking the streets, for example._

" _Be nice, Anthy,"_ Belial chided, which was entirely uncalled for.

She knew better than to _actually_ say it. She just thought it, very hard, and let the hidden sentiment kindle the deceptively gentle curve of her mouth a little longer. "Actually," she mentioned, "I'm a little surprised you're so willing to let me wander around this part of the city." That was… mostly true. She had hardly been bedecked in silks and gold when they first saw her, but Yunan's word did have centuries of credibility backing it, she supposed.

In the clothes she was wearing and in the company she currently kept, however, it made sense that nobody gave them a second glance; paired up and finely dressed, the two of them made for a pretty picture, just two young patricians out for a stroll.

"You are the guest of Lady Scheherazade _herself,"_ Titus explained. "By extension, it would be a grave insult to bar your from these areas."

 _So_ _ **that's**_ _how you say her name._

"I see." She laughed softly.

Anthy had gleaned more than just a clarification on pronunciation from his impassioned statement. By saying that, he had let her know something very, very important: they didn't know about Belial. Personally, she was entirely inclined to keep it that way. While King Vessels naturally garnered a certain amount of respect, two factors held her back. The first was that she had already personally decided not to use Belial's power if at all possible, barring using Djinn Equip for flight purposes—because it was a damn long road back to Kou from this part of the world and also because who _didn't_ want the ability to fly, really?—and doubtlessly there would be people that wanted a demonstration of her status and capabilities if she was entirely open about her status. The second factor was that the very nature of Belial's abilities caused a kneejerk suspicion to niggle at even the most open and trusting of minds.

Best to just be a mysterious traveler with a powerful benefactor, she felt. Scheherazade probably assumed that Anthy was, at best, a _candidate_ for becoming a King Vessel. In an ideal world, Yunan would probably send somebody on a journey to test them before bestowing a _normal_ , not-cataclysmic power upon them. Or rather, an ideal, sane magi would do so. Given what she knew of Yunan—and Judal for that matter—her own circumstances were admittedly not beyond the realm of imagination.

She just hadn't ever _bothered_ imagining something like this would happen to her. When Judal had offered to raise a Dungeon for her if she fell into Depravity for him and had graciously accepted her gentle refusal—that is to say, he called her a boring little doll and sulked off for the better part of a month—Anthy had well and truly thought she had dodged her one shot at adventure. She had, at the time, nearly regretted it.

 _Nearly_ regretted it.

Her decision had been cast in a much better light the next time Hakuei returned to the palace—victorious, naturally—with plenty of battle stories. Anthy was not a fighter. And, unlike her mother, she wasn't a _lover_ , either. Anthy was a bookish, sarcastic crybaby under the courtly veneer of a cloistered, well-groomed princess. She wasn't entirely helpless, granted, but she was still so not cut out for this… this globetrotting _quest_ to get back to her homeland that it was almost funny. She was lucky that she had a knack for lies and half-truths and basic skills for self-sufficiency, carried over from her first life.

"Actually," she said, turning a smile onto Titus. "You know what? I think the Forum can wait a little while. What's the biggest market around here?"

"Um…" Titus looked at her like a deer caught in the headlights.

He probably wouldn't know that, off the top of his very sheltered head. That, she reasoned, was all the more reason to take him along. She wouldn't buy anything, probably, but generally speaking markets were a font of information; there were likely merchants from Kou there who she could ask about travel routes. She wasn't worried about being recognized; very, very few people knew her by sight aside from her relatives and the higher courtiers. During her unexpected trip with Hakuryuu into the countryside, she had been thought to be his bride by the villagers that had sheltered them rather than a princess of Kou in her own right, despite being less than eighty miles from the city she had spent her entire life in.

"I can ask," Titus said, glancing back towards the guards who had been discreetly trailing them the entire time. The beginnings of fascinated excitement glittered in his eyes, and she felt her smile grow a little more honest in response.

That was another benefit: Anthy had a soft spot a mile wide for children. Even if Titus physically and mentally was only slightly younger than her, there was a certain lack of experience; a type of stumbling, curious eagerness he had displayed so far as they explored that had rapidly endeared him to her.

"Let's," she decided, gently steering him over to their protective detail.

* * *

"So," said Scheherazade later that night, at dinner. "Titus tells me you seem to be headed to Kou, next."

Titus choked slightly on his wine, apparently not expecting his report on Anthy to be relayed to her face so quickly. Anthy continued sipping at her cider entirely unbothered. Scheherazade wasn't touching the food—understandably—but the princess saw little value in obscuring her plans or even letting her current meal be derailed by them.

"Well, not _next,_ " she pointed out, after swallowing the mouthful of marinated chicken she had been enjoying. "Given how far off it is, after all. But, it's the next end goal."

"I wonder," Scheherazade mused. "You were passed to me from Yunan. Am I to send you on to the third of our number?" If her eyes had actually been open, Anthy suspected they might have narrowed after that question for effect. Given Judal's proclivities and the international incidents she occasionally heard Hakuyuu moan to her eldest brother about, her 'childhood friend' likely had a very poor reputation in certain circles.

And that was _without_ taking the stigma of blackened Rukh into consideration.

"I'm sure I'll cross paths with that one too, sooner or late," Anthy admitted. She just chose to avoid mentioning that he was most likely throwing a tantrum and zipping around to find her in the meantime. "But really, I just want to return to that country in particular. I left something important there when Yunan decided to just up and drag me off."

Namely, her _entire life_.

"I see," the magi nodded slowly, apparently satisfied with her answer. "I believe I understand why Yunan sent you here, then."

"He wanted me to take the long way," Anthy confirmed, her tone sour as she took another long sip of cordial. "At least, I think that's his reasoning. I'm not even sure _Yunan_ always knows what Yunan is thinking." Perhaps that was unfair of her to say, but the man had kidnapped her. No matter how charismatic he was or how good his intentions might have been, she had every right to still resent him for it.

She was very deliberately not thinking about how her cousins or Judal or—oh God—her _father_ might be reacting in the aftermath. It wasn't conceited of her to think that there would be no small amount of fallout over this stunt; even removing the fondness they held for her from the equation, her family was inarguably chock-full of prideful, aggressive people. If somebody—or rather, many somebodies—didn't _die_ once Kouha was informed, she would be shocked. And, she could admit in a twisted, shameful little corner of her mind, perhaps even a little hurt.

She was reminded, once again, how warped her standards had become in this life. She quickly distracted herself with another mouthful of cider.

Her hostess had a benign, unreadable look on her face that made Anthy immediately uncomfortable.

"Did… Have I said something strange?"

"No," Scheherazade shook her head. "I suppose I'm just relieved that you aren't as easily dazzled as the other individuals that Yunan has taken an interest in over the years." She tilted her head in a manner that somehow managed to be both elegant and self-deprecatory. "He helped train me early on in my life, so I must admit that I was once among that number."

Titus looked fascinated, apparently as unprepared for this revelation as Anthy was.

"Really?" She rubbed her thumb against the rim of her goblet, feeling a bit awkward. "I, uh… Well, my sister is always saying that I'm just not an easy girl to satisfy." To be exact, Kourin usually meant it in regards to food, which was as insulting as it was mostly-inaccurate. "So maybe that's it?"

"Perhaps," Scheherazade said graciously, an amused cast overtaking her face. "Are you very close with this sister of yours? It must be difficult, being so far away from her, if so."

That was an almost blatant hook for information, but Anthy would not be baited. "Less difficult than you might think," she huffed, entirely honest. "She's been making even more of a nuisance of herself than usual, since she's going to be married off soon. It's almost like being on a vacation, not having to deal with that every day."

Almost, because not having to listen to Kourin's snide little barbs at her weight and blood was nowhere near worth not having Koubun and the twins by her side. She felt, once again, the phantom throb at not having them at her back. If they were here, Koubun would be subtly signaling her dozens of safe conversation topics she could segue into. Shinju and Shinri would have rendered this entire extended stay completely unnecessary; they were strong enough and cunning enough that all four of them would have been out of the city and miles away by breakfast time tomorrow, safe on their way back to Kou.

"What about you?" Anthy asked, taken in a flash of Koubun-worthy inspiration. "Do you have any family?" It was a _faux-pas_ that she made a show of visibly regretting once said; Scheherazade was hundreds of years old, and therefore any true family she once had, unable to maintain the magoi-intensive life-support she herself used, would have perished years ago.

Her carefully calculated gaffe, however, was sent flying as Scheherazade actually _giggled._

"You spent the entire day with my son, actually." The magi was smiling in a warm manner that outstripped the bland, dignified expressions she had been sporting thus far. Anthy didn't even have to fake the thunderstruck look she was no doubt sporting.

"I was… what?" She glanced at Titus and found him staring, shiny-eyed and completely taken aback—at his mother. It was gratifying, in a sad sort of way. Anthy herself objectively knew that Scheherazade had always loved Titus as a son just as he had loved her as a parent. However, in the version of events _Anthy_ knew, it had taken until they were both teetering on the brink of death that the magi revealed her true feelings.

It had been a while since she had been so starkly reminded of the differences between this life and that story, Yunan's interference notwithstanding. She didn't mind this discrepancy at all though; Titus had obviously needed to hear this as soon as possible.

"I would have never guessed," she vaguely admitted after recovering from her bout of shocked gaping. "He never said."

"The people of Reim," Scheherazade told her in a loving but exasperated sort of way—as though sharing the secret of Titus' parentage had opened the floodgates of her carefully controlled emotions—that made her seem closer to her actual age than her physical appearance. "Very much enjoy the myth of an unchanging, ageless, _virginal_ magi. It suits my purposes to indulge their fantasy, more or less."

Titus looked scandalized and then vaguely—and increasingly _not_ so vaguely—horrified at the implications of his mother's virginity being fictitious.

Anthy took one look at him and nearly choked on her cider, she was laughing so hard.

* * *

 **Next Time:** _Anthy was going to ruin somebody's day, that much was certain._


	5. Chapter 4: In Vino Cura

**AN:** I'll dedicate this chapter to The White Camellia, who drew a picture of Anthy's Djinn Equip. Thank you very much.

* * *

 **The Cuckoo**

* * *

 _Chapter 4: In Vino Cura_

 _"…_ _she went up the last flight of stairs with a lump in her throat and tears blurring her sight. There would be no fire tonight, and no rosy lamp; no supper, and no princess sitting in the glow reading or telling stories—no princess!"_

―Frances Hodgson Burnett, _A Little Princess_

* * *

Ka Koubun, Personal Attendant to the Ninth Imperial Princess of the Kou Empire, stared at the letter in his hands—or perhaps, it would be fairer to say that he stared _through_ it, eyes unseeing. The words were not what he wanted to see, and therefore had no worth. It was practically a copy of the last one he had received: ' _Still no word on the location of Princess Kougyoku. Investigations will continue, and further progress will be reported soon.'_

The rich paper crinkled under his grip, and he didn't care in the least. If it wasn't a confirmation that his princess had been found, was safe, and already on her way back to the palace, then it was little more than a waste of ink and stationary.

When he had first been drafted to serve the royal family, he had been little more than a child himself, just barely thirteen and full of childish dreams of someday working his way up and becoming the power behind the throne. Rendered sterile by a childhood illness and a scholar by choice, entering into the Imperial Palace was the best legacy an ambitious eunuch could hope for; his elder brothers were the ones expected to carry on the family name and glorify it through military and mercantile prowess. He had started as a scribe's assistant in one of the palace's libraries, and before his sudden promotion the only contact he had with any member of the royal family had been fetching tomes for their lessons.

Still, even that level of proximity had been enough for him to glean all sorts of gossip. Emperor Hakutoku's children were noble and brilliant, everybody agreed. Crown Prince Hakuyuu would make an excellent ruler, everybody had said, and likely very soon. Prince Hakuren might look genial and laid-back, but he had a mind like a dagger, bright and sharp. Princess Hakuei was learning swordplay at a prodigious pace, he had been surprised to learn, and Prince Hakuryuu had always been widely agreed to be a gentle, optimistic child that was doted on relentlessly by Empress Gyokuen.

All those rumors had been commonplace, and the ones about Prince Koutoku's brood had been even more pervasive. The latest and most tantalizing at the time, of course, had been about the youngest of his children, the whore's daughter he had claimed and brought into the palace along with the mother, a woman who everybody had agreed was an exotic beauty beyond compare.

The little princess, however, was more infamous for the misfortune that seemed to dog after her servants.

Some said she was wicked and made sport of getting rid of her attendants. Some said that the servants had acted above their station, thinking themselves superior to a prostitute's child, and then paid the price for their arrogance. Some said that they were paid off by jealous concubines, who had resented the attention their newest peer and her child had been receiving from Prince Koutoku.

Koubun had been utterly floored when he had been selected to serve her. His supervisor thought it might be his diligence that set him apart from the crowd, but Koubun eventually realized that his mistress's previous attendants had all been women; he privately thought it was more likely that he had been selected as a change of pace, or as an experiment.

Whatever the reason, though, he _had_ been chosen, and had accepted the honor. Princess Kougyoku might have been lowborn and reclusive, but she had also quickly become a favorite with the Crown Prince and even her father, which the servants found the more impressive accomplishment considering how little of his attention he generally deigned to give the rest of his sons and daughters.

It was an opportunity he would have had to be crazy to pass up, and he had done his best to brace himself for whatever mischief or bribery awaited him. Some of his apprehension had been soothed by the addition of two female guards from the En family. Even if the princess managed to give him the slip, they would be able to track her down immediately.

However, when he _met_ his charge, all he could really think about was how _small_ she was. Lady Domitia, who insisted on meeting him and the twins beforehand, had been every bit as dazzling and glamorous as the wagging tongues in the servants' quarters claimed. Prince Koutoku was even more imposing than he had expected. With both those presences stark in his mind, he had been briefly floored by the tiny slip of a girl. She looked more like a doll than an actual person, as though a strong touch might shatter her.

That wasn't to say she _was_ fragile, though.

Koubun had learned early on that his little mistress was, at her core, a direct and determined individual. While at first he had rejected her more reckless requests, such as tree climbing or going up on the roof to see the stars—he was aghast at the negligence of his predecessors—eventually he eased up and allowed her to do as she wished, with the caveat that her guards be with her every step of the way.

His princess had the admirable and slightly terrifying ability to sweep the people around her up into her own pace. She had a way of making it _comfortable_ to fall into step with her plans and interests. Perhaps he should have resented her for it, but every time he tried to summon up his past desires to use her, his mind unerringly turned back to his second day with her, to guileless and trusting pink eyes. The personal name of a noble was generally a privilege available to the closest of family members or confidants; even if the child hadn't understood the gravity of extending that privilege, it was still frustratingly touching.

Painting a reminder of that on her brow each morning had come to be something of a reaffirmation for him—a reminder that this girl, this young woman, trusted him as she did her own blood. It kept his ambitions and emotions balanced, and, he was sure, ingratiated him to her that much more.

Truthfully, the last few months had made him restless. The Oracle's earlier mistake had ultimately put his princess in no true danger and she returned to the palace with Prince Hakuryuu unharmed and even refreshed by her time away, but it had roused an unpleasant realization. His princess was a young woman, second in line to be married off. As a eunuch, he posed no danger to her future husband and would likely be allowed to keep attending her, but he couldn't escape the thought that marriage was not something he could intrude upon or protect her from.

Some man—a noble, or king, or perhaps a general—would take the child Koubun had painstakingly and lovingly raised into his bed and she would come back a woman.

Oh, he had no doubt that the man would be good, given how his princess had endeared herself to the Emperor and her father over the years, but the thought rankled all the same. For years, Koubun had guided her through the dire straits of court life, had taught her how to couch her intentions in gentle words and to diffuse tension. He knew how much she loved her current life, how little interest she had in leaving Kou, and he knew that if the men responsible for choosing her husband willed it, she would be whisked away across the map no matter what she wanted or felt.

With that in mind, the current situation was something out of his wildest nightmares.

A foreign magi was ten, a hundred, a _thousand_ times worse than a foreign husband, because she was alone now. Koubun had turned his back for one moment, and she had been stolen away, plunged into a level of danger that he had thought she was safe from after rejecting the Oracle's offer to raise a Dungeon years before. And then, _then_ his princess was gone entirely, leaving Koubun and the twins to drive themselves up the wall with worry and impotent anger.

The twins, he knew, rarely left the training halls these restless days unless they needed to eat or sleep, and then only took their meals with Koubun in their princess's empty quarters, silently banding together in their mourning and drowning their sorrows in the princess's 'hidden' stock of wine, which she had always offered to them frequently and without shame.

"…still no word, I take it?"

Koubun blinked, the only outward expression of surprise he allowed himself, even if he wanted to jump and clutch at his chest. He relaxed his death-grip on the disappointing letter and forced a faint, polite smile, bowing even as he cursed himself. He must have been well and truly consumed with his dark thoughts to miss the arrival of the Crown Prince and his Honored Mother.

"I'm afraid so, Your Imperial Highnesses," he said. There was no way to hide the bitterness coloring his tone, but he winced all the same. He would have scolded his princess for such a slip, after all, and he had always believed that an honorable person should practice what they preached.

It was the Empress who had first spoken, but Prince Hakuwa seemed every bit as discontent as Koubun himself.

"Where are those guards even looking?!" The Imperial Heir burst out, crossing his arms. The newly embossed seal on the dagger at his waist caught the light, a glimmer tracing over the eight points; the only good to come out of that nightmarish day. "Judal's trying to hunt down that Yunan, but we at least know she's outside the country, right? They should be able to find _some_ trace of her with magic, at the very least."

"I'm afraid matters aren't… quite so simple, Your Highness," Koubun hedged, folding the disappointing letter and tucking it away. One of the twins would tear it up later, he was sure.

"That's right, Wacchan," Empress Eiki said sedately, smoothing her son's hair back. "There was an incident about ten years ago, in a territory that used to belong to Magnostadt; it left a rather strange phenomenon in its wake, which to this day interferes with long-distance scrying and travel with magical aid going towards that region. It isn't the magicians' fault they can't find her. Even the Oracle is having difficulties, you know."

"…Acchan's all alone, Mama," Prince Hakuwa said, and for once all signs of his natural genius and maturity were gone, leaving only a child squeezing his mother's hand for reassurance. Koubun looked away, silently allowing them a moment of privacy. "She's all alone and she never has been before. Last time, she at least had Uncle Ryuu with her. She's probably scared."

Koubun's heart ached to hear his own worries given voice. He dearly hoped the young prince was wrong.

* * *

"You are _so_ wrong!" Anthy insisted, causing a wave of low 'ohhhs' to rise up from the surrounding crowd. She shook her wine-muddled head resolutely and jammed her finger against the old, battered tabletop for emphasis. "Sooo wrong."

 _"_ _Why on Earth did you try to outdrink a Fanalis?"_ Belial asked her, torn between incredulity and secondhand embarrassment.

"Shush," she said out loud.

"Hey!" Mu laughed. "First you tell me I'm wrong, then I have to shut up before I can even defend myself? You're a domineering little lady, to be sure." He was still chuckling as he quaffed back another goblet of wine. Anthy thought that was a fantastic idea and was all set to follow suit, if only she could find her cup. Her eyes tracked it to Mu's other hand. "You're cut off, kiddo," he told her, not unkindly.

"He's being mean because he's _wrong_ ," she informed a nearby Fanalis Corps member in a loud whisper. When the woman laughed, Antsy gave her a baleful look.

"I swear I am not wrong about this," Mu insisted, drinking Anthy's unlawfully seized wine like a total bastard. "I really did fight one of those today."

"Well, _I_ just spent like a week killing stuff like that because Yunan said I had to if I wanted to leave," Anthy huffed. "And I'm telling you, those prickly gooey things—they don't spit poison. S'acid. Burned clean through a rock." She squinted at him suspiciously. "I think you've been fighting _knockoffs_ in that Collili… the Colisisu… that big death match place a'yours." She gave him a delicate shrug. "If you're gonna boast, y'gotta be _accurate_."

"Knockoff monsters," Mu scoffed, before his expression turned contemplative. "We might have to check and make sure the magicians haven't been crossbreeding again." He was still slowly nursing her cup of wine as he considered this new possibility, so she kicked him in the shin.

"Ow," she said, plaintively.

"I'm wearing armor," he reminded her, as snickers swept through the crowd.

"You," she informed him, "are the second worst person I know."

"I'm not even first?" Mu cried, clapping a hand to his chest as if mortally wounded.

"You're not as bad as Yunan—he's _the worst,"_ she explained seriously. "But you're mean to Titus."

It had been something she had noticed peripherally. He wasn't outright _cruel_ to her assigned guide, but he more or less gave Titus all the due consideration of a pillar; that was to say, he was spatially aware of Titus just enough to avoid walking into him. He didn't hesitate to greet _Anthy_ , or invite her drinking while on his way down the streets towards the Colosseum, but his eyes slid over Titus almost unconsciously, and he didn't even bother to greet him properly. With the noise of the crowds, it was impossible to say whether or not his lack of response to Titus' quickly tacked on farewells was a case of honest ignorance or a purposeful snub.

It made Anthy's head ache, and her gut churn angrily. Hadn't she left these sorts of complicated ties behind her in Kou? They were the only part of her home she didn't miss, Anthy reflected. So maybe it made sense that they would follow her to Reim, because Reim was a terrible, corrupted cesspit and she hated it as an institution.

"Wha—" His brow furrowed and he blinked, apparently not expecting to get called out on this particular topic. "I am not _mean_ to—"

 _"_ _So_ mean," she decried, to the increasingly amused crowd of Fanalis. "Titus is a sweet little baby. Sweetest thing." She cradled her face in one hand and cooed. "Total darling. An' you just _ignore_ him. How can you even do that? Who even _does_ that?"

"He's not a baby," Mu said slowly, his eyes beginning to narrow ever so slightly. "Why would you say that?"

"Please," Anthy scoffed. "He is _such_ a baby. S'in the cheeks," she told him sagely, giving one of her own a demonstrative little poke. "Chubby and rosy and full of hope. That you crush. By _ignoring him._ "

"He does kind of have baby-cheeks," somebody said, and she threw her hands up victoriously.

"Thank you!" she cried. "You see?" She waved at Mu. "Don't change the subject when I'm right, s'rude."

 _"_ _I'm_ the one changing the subject?" Mu laughed, incredulous. "That boy shouldn't have even come up in this conversation to begin with."

"A _ha!_ You're even ignoring him when he's not here!"

"That's not even possible," he tried to protest, but Anthy would not be swayed.

"Hmph! What's the longest conversh… _conversation_ you've ever had with him?" She challenged, enunciating her words carefully.

Mu opened his mouth. After a moment, he paused, and closed his mouth. Tried again. He took a long sip from her cup and looked away, wracking his brain.

"…You've never even had one?" She was aghast, sobered slightly by the implications.

"I have!" Mu snapped, defensive. "He'll be leaving for school, soon, so I've lectured him on how to act."

"So. Mean." Anthy said, glancing at the Fanalis on either side of her, eyes theatrically wide. "My big brothers never pick on me that much." She paused, head tilting and lips pursing. "My sisters have, but at least they _talk_ to me like an actual human being."

Mu's eyes narrowed again. "Excuse me?"

"You can lecture at a lump of stone," she scoffed, waving dismissively. "Doesn't count as a conversh _-_ sation." She huffed, blowing her bangs up in irritation. "…Ugh, I think I need to go to bed."

 _"_ _Good choice,"_ Belial praised her, as she clambered to her feet to a chorus of disappointed protests. _"You wanted to go see the Imperial Magicians tomorrow, didn't you? You'll need a good sleep."_

What she needed was a Djinn, not a second mother. Luckily, Anthy didn't say _that_ out loud, but it was a near thing. "You stole that," she said, pointing on her cup. "So you've gotta finish it. And don't be mean to Titus any more."

"Fine, fine," Mu rolled his eyes and shooed her off. "Precious baby, I get it. Can't let Lady Scheherazade's guest be unhappy."

"But you can let her _son_ , huh?" Anthy shook her head and hobbled off, unmindful of the dead silence that swept the crowded, Fanalis-filled bar. "I see how it is. Just be nicer! Good night!"

And with that said, she drunkenly swept out, pleased once again that she had inherited her father's tendency towards grace even three sheets to the wind, if not his height.

* * *

"What did you _do_ last night?" Titus asked her the next morning over their relatively modest breakfast. They were set up at a little gazebo, just the two of them and a few servants to attend to their meal.

"I'unno," she shrugged, finishing off her banana and drinking another cup of water, squinting resentfully at the birds singing gaily in the garden surrounding them. Her head felt like a drum. A drum made of pain and regret. The only sound that didn't send pain shooting through her temples was Belial's well-intentioned nagging in the back of her mind, which made it slightly more bearable than the usual riot act Koubun read to her in the wake of her over-indulgences. "Be more specific, Titus-chan, I feel like I did multiple things last night."

"Apparently I am a baby," he told her woodenly.

She reflected on this for a moment. "I must say that you are _remarkably_ tall for your age, if so."

"That's _not_ what I mean," he groaned, burying his face in one hand.

"I told you, be more specific."

Titus looked to the heavens, presumably praying for guidance and the strength to persevere. "Fine. Is this specific enough for you? Why did Mu Alexius break into my bedroom at the crack of dawn and drag me along to watch his morning training today?"

"Did he say anything?" Anthy asked, eyes narrowing immediately into a dark expression.

"He literally sat me down and talked to me about fighting styles and what it means to be a man for an hour." Titus racked a hand through his hair and looked up, cheeks going pink. "And women? I think? He might have been using metaphors a lot towards the end and I think he was warming up to some sort of topic I don't want to think about. I think he wants to take me along with him to see the courtesans tonight, if I'm reading him right. Why would he do that?"

"Would you rather he ignore you?" Anthy asked rhetorically, feeling brave enough to nibble at a scone as her stomach settled down.

"I _knew_ it! You _did_ do something!"

"I just informed him that he was being mean and negligent." She shrugged, eyes wide and innocent as Titus choked and sputtered, mouthing 'mean' to himself several times, as if it were a novel concept. Finally, he pressed a hand over his eyes.

"…he isn't obligated to show me that kind of attention," he mumbled.

"That doesn't mean you don't want it," she noted, keeping her voice gently. "I know what that looks like; my closest brother is always chasing after our oldest brothers." Titus was, she reflected, less inclined to go on maniacal, bloody rampages to get said attention, which Anthy privately thought was a great virtue that Reim should be highly thankful for.

"Well, yes," Titus admitted, obviously embarrassed. "But… I always felt like I had to _earn_ it. Not that I was owed it."

"Never beg for affection," she advised him, trading her water for a nice cup of juice. "Like yourself first, then others will follow suit."

 _"_ ** _Anthy_** _,"_ Belial broke off the soothing background noise of his lecture for a single, hyper-concentrated moment of disapproval.

Cordial should absolutely count as juice, she privately insisted. There was nothing wrong with taking a bit of the hair of the dog that bit her.

 _"_ _Miss Chrysanthi,"_ Titus said sternly, a perfect echo of her Djinn. She was willing to bet that the disapproving little pout was just the expression Belial would have, if she summoned him right now. "Is it really okay for you to keep drinking like this?" His tone gentled, eyes shining with obvious concern. They had grown a bit closer over the last few days, his opinion of her irreversibly heightened because she was the catalyst for his first real display of affection from his mother.

"Mu Alexius drinks way more than this every day," she informed him, as if that in any way condoned her own excesses.

 _I'll stop drinking once I'm out of this damned country,_ she thought, and her pleasant expression didn't so much as twitch.

"Mu Alexius is half-Fanalis," Titus stressed. "Please cut back a little. For the sake of my worries."

"Fine," Anthy sighed, putting her cup back and accepting a new glass of water from one of the servants. "If it's for your sake, I guess I can do that." She paused, staring out at the garden with a faint smile. "It would be terrible if somebody accused me of bullying a sweet little baby like you, after all."

"Miss Chrysanthi!" Titus buried his face in his hands, bright red, and she let the laughter she had been holding back finally spill forth.

"Sorry, sorry," she waved a hand, completely unrepentant. "I _may_ have sung your praises a little too sweetly last night."

"All the Fanalis Corps members were looking at me and sniggering earlier," Titus said, turning glum at the memory. "Myron Alexius actually _pinched my cheeks_ and asked me, 'So, is this what hope feels like?'" He held his hands in front of him and slowly raised his gaze to her, completely bewildered. "How does that even make sense?"

"It actually does, in context," Anthy reflected, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "Did she call them rosy and chubby, too?"

"Rosy and…?" Titus furrowed his brow, clearly bewildered, which answered her question easily enough. "How did my cheeks become a topic for that much discussion?"

"They're your qualifiers for babyhood," Anthy educated him, reaching over their little table to pat his shoulder consolingly when he slumped forward in obvious defeat. "But I'm absolutely going to snitch on Mu's plans to take you to the pleasure district to Lady Magi, just so you know. The world doesn't need an adult Titus just yet."

"You're the _worst_ , Lady Chrysanthi," Titus groaned pitifully.

"You're just saying that," she waved off the claim. "You just haven't met Yunan yet, that's all."

Titus began, gently and rhythmically, to bang his head against his folded arms.

* * *

Eventually, Titus finished his moping and Anthy finished her breakfast, and the two of them moved on to their actual plans for the day: touring the Imperial Atelier.

It was a massive, towering, sprawling estate, housing the magically gifted elite of Reim. There were libraries so sprawling they could take literal days to navigate, there were Magical Tools of every shape, size, and possible use, there were experiments conducted every hour in dozens of labs, there were—

"Sheep?" Anthy stopped suddenly, cocking her head to one side.

After a moment, she realized that she had heard right; that bleating definitely sounded sheep-ish. She knew this for a fact because there had been _plenty_ of those wooly, mindless bastards in the village she and Hakuryuu had unintentionally visited with Judal's help. Anthy had learned very quickly that, while mostly harmless and adorable in lamb form, grown sheep were incredibly annoying to tend to and direct while constrained by a silk gown.

Hakuryuu had nearly laughed himself sick at the sight of her trapped in a continuously moving circle of those beasts, damn him.

"Must be an experiment," Titus deduced. "There was a surplus of sheep and goat births over the last few years, so they became the most readily available test subjects."

"I see," Anthy said, not particularly caring about Reim's current Sheep Boom, but she made a mental note to tell one of her cousins when she got home. They were still working on reigning in all the different nomadic tribes, and _they_ cared about sheep. It might be worth looking into, later on. "Can we peek in?"

"Well, it looks like they're in one of the public areas," Titus told her. "So… it's probably fine. If there's anything sensitive, they'll have cordoned it off away from the general public."

He said 'general public,' but when they slipped inside and up a raised ramp that circled the round room and the gigantic, vague familiar-looking matrix on the floor, serving as an audience section, the only people Anthy saw were nobles. Probably patrons, she reflected, and not just bored patricians looking for entertainment, though at least some were likely the latter. Looking down at a rocking mesh cage stacked on other, sturdier cages, she realized that she had been wrong before; she hadn't heard a sheep at all.

It was a goat. A big, ornery, obviously upset goat.

The magicians crowded together near a large slate at the front of the room, across from the railed ramp, were apparently entirely unbothered by the ruckus, though a few of the aristocrats were barely hiding sneers as they glanced down at the upset animal. Anthy felt far more sympathetic, mostly because a goat had once done her a great service: namely, head-butting Hakuryuu square in the gut while he was laughing at her, sending him toppling to the ground and forcing the sheep to scatter in alarm.

Titus was distracted by one of the nobles engaging him in some conversation—she heard Mu's name, and lost most of her interest—so she took the opportunity to slip forward to the front, carefully leaning over the rail to peer down at the poor, trapped goat.

 _"_ _Careful, Anthy,"_ Belial chided her.

"Hush," she said, to both Djinn and livestock, before turning her attention to the goat entirely, easily ignoring her Djinn's outraged huffing. "There, there, you'll be out soon enough," she crooned to the animal, letting one arm dangle down towards the cage. This proved to be a phenomenal mistake.

As if it had been the signal that the goat had been waiting for, it finally broke through its feeble cage, immediately leaping upwards with the help of the other cages, which bleated in far more sheep-y cries of distress. It got fairly high, but scrabbled against the railing. In a fit of animalistic genius, it extended its neck and bit down on the front of Anthy's stole, presumably to use her as a counterweight. Unfortunately for the goat, it's plan backfired and it dragged her over the side of the ramp.

As she tumbled down, Anthy's thoughts raced, tranquil in the way one only truly ever was when things were happening too fast to panic. She wondered who would get blamed for this little mishap; Titus? The magicians meant to be supervising the goat? The goat itself? If this were Kou, she was sure her father would insist on the execution of every party involved, including the goat, and her Yuu-niisama would, at the very least, spare Titus and the goat. But Reim liked to pretend that it was a fair and just society that thrived on goodwill rather than the slave-trade, so she had no idea who would bear culpability or get punished for this.

Anthy was going to ruin _somebody's_ day, that much was certain.

 _"_ _Worry about yourself before oth—"_ Belial began to scold her, but his voice cut out as soon as she hit the circle, goat and all.

 _Oh,_ Anthy realized, as a bright flash filled her gaze and the goat screamed into her chest. _So_ ** _that's_** _why it looked familiar._

When the light cleared, she was falling again—this time from a greater height. She squinted into the whipping wind and realized that the large, dark shape growing larger by the second was some sort of lake or pond, and grit her teeth.

"Spirit of Truth and Conviction," she called out, her words almost lost in the howl of the winds kicked up by their arrival and descent. "In the name of my Magoi, and my will to—" She coughed, hard, but pushed on. "—My will to grant me a g-greater power, I order you and your members! Come forth, Belial!"

Nothing happened.

Anthy squeezed the golden amulet fluttering up by her face, but it was as cold and unresponsive as it had been before she had been unceremoniously dumped into Bell's clutches, even if his seal was still there.

"Well, shit," she told the goat, right before they hit the water.

* * *

 **Next Time:** _"There's no rush," Anthy told his beautiful, beautiful biceps, "I like to travel leisurely."_


End file.
